The Gospel of John - Berean Bible Society
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
COMPARED WITH OTHER SCRIPTURES
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN . . . THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST
Some time ago an evangelist announced that he was going to speak on “The Fifth Gospel.” He read Romans 2:16, Romans 16:25 and II Timothy 2:8, in which verses the apostle Paul called the gospel “my gospel.” Then said the evangelist, “if you insist upon calling Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, “The Four Gospels,” I will call Paul’s Gospel, “The Fifth Gospel.” As “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” has been erroneously called “The Revelation of Saint John the Divine,” John’s Record of the life and ministry, the sayings and doings, the death and resurrection of the eternal, Divine, omnipotent, omniscient, sinless Lord Jesus Christ has been erroneously called, “The Gospel of John.”
Some theologians and Bible expositors tell us that in John’s Record we have a combination of “the gospel of the kingdom” and “the gospel of the grace of God.” But most of them say that there is no difference between “the gospel of the kingdom” and “the gospel of the grace of God.” It is very interesting to note that the word ‘kingdom’ is found in three verses in John’s Record . . . . John 3:3 and 5 and John 18:36 . . . and that the word ‘grace’ is also found in three verses . . . John 1:14 . . . John 1:16 and 17. But what may be a surprise to many is the fact that the word ‘gospel’ is not found once in John’s Record. The Lord directed John to write five Messages or Books; namely, the so-called “Gospel of John,” his three Epistles, and “The Revelation.” In the first four of these Books the word ‘gospel’ is not found; and only once in “The Revelation.” In Revelation 14:6 a very strange evangelist is preaching “the everlasting gospel,” an angel in the midst of heaven. The minister of Christ is supposed to be, expected to be, a faithful steward of the mysteries of God. (I Corinthians 4:1 to 4). The minister of Christ who contends that the “everlasting gospel” of Revelation is the same as “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24), which was given by special revelation from the risen Christ to the apostle Paul (Galatians 1:11 and 12 . . . Ephesians 3:1 to 3), is certainly not a steward of the mysteries of God, but rather a workman who needeth to be ashamed because he does not rightly divide the Word of truth. (II Timothy 2:15).
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
THE GOSPEL OF THE GRACE OF GOD
We have mentioned the fact that the word ‘gospel’ is not used in John’s Record; that the word ‘grace’ is found in three verses; and the word ‘kingdom’ is found in three verses. What we want to know is this, according to the documentary evidence, the written Message which the Holy Spirit directed John to write, what gospel is presented in John’s Record? We may turn to Matthew, Mark and Luke and learn what gospel Christ and His apostles preached during the years of the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God by miracles and signs in the midst of Israel. (Acts 2:22). We learn in Matthew 3:2, 4:17 and Matthew 10:5 to 8, that John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth and the twelve apostles all preached; “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Then read in Mark 1:14 and 15: “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe the gospel.” We read in Matthew 4:23 and Matthew 9:35: “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching ‘the gospel of the kingdom,’ and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” In Matthew 10:3 to 8 and in Luke 9:1 to 6 we learn that the Lord Jesus instructed and empowered His twelve apostles to preach the same gospel and to perform the same miracles. But let us keep in mind the truth of Matthew 15:24 and Matthew 10:5 to 7; that the Lord Jesus plainly stated: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” . . . “Go not into the way of the Gentiles. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.”
Years after the Lord Jesus had died and gone back to heaven He appeared to the apostle Paul in the temple in a vision and said. “I will send thee far hence to the Gentiles.” (Acts 22:17 to 22). Several years later Paul testified, in Romans 15:8 and 16 to 21, that Jesus Christ was a Minister of the circumcision with a ministry and message which was in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy, but that he, Paul, was a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. In this same Epistle to the Romans the apostle Paul declared that there was no difference between the Jew and the Gentile (Romans 10:12 and 13); that salvation was sent to Gentiles when and because of the ‘FALL’ and ‘CASTING AWAY’ and ‘DIMINISHING’ of Israel. (Romans 11:11 to 15). (Romans 11:30). Reconciliation and Divine mercy were offered to the Gentiles. Then the apostle of the Gentiles (Romans 11:13) wrote; “the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11). He wrote, in Romans 16:25, that members of the Body of Christ were to be established by “my gospel”, the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the beginning of the world. (Romans 16:25). Surely we recognize a most radical change between the day the Lord Jesus instructed the twelve apostles to go to Israel, preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and the day the risen, glorified Christ instructed the apostle Paul to proclaim the grace of God at hand for all men and to establish members of the Body of Christ with Divine truth not mentioned or contemplated by Old Testament prophets.
Surely every spiritual, intelligent, Spirit-taught member of the Body of Christ knows that Israel is God’s ‘kingdom’ nation. They should know that God’s spiritual program for the human race, for Jew and Gentile, changed when and because God set aside His ‘kingdom’ nation; that, when and because of that great change, God ushered in “the dispensation of the grace of God for Gentiles,” which Paul called “the mystery of Christ.” (Ephesians 3:1 to 3). But now back to Matthew, Mark and Luke.
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
In nineteen of the twenty-seven Books from Matthew to Revelation the word ‘gospel’ is found 104 times. Then the Greek word translated ‘gospel’ is translated several times ‘glad tidings.’ In eight of the twenty-seven Books the word ‘gospel’ is not found. In all of Paul’s Epistles he mentions ‘gospel,’ except in Titus. Yet in Titus the wonderful, glorious, blessed gospel of salvation by grace, without works or religion, is presented. Any spiritual, intelligent, Spirit-led student of the Scriptures who will compare the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, from Matthew 4:23 to Matthew 8:5, “the gospel of the kingdom” and the more than fifty religious requirements and obligations in these Scriptures, with Titus 3:3 to 8, should certainly say, “what a difference between the two gospels!”
The New Testament Scriptures have much to say concerning “the kingdom.” The word “kingdom” is found 155 times in these twenty-seven Books. In Paul’s Epistles he mentions “the kingdom of God” twelve times and “the kingdom of Christ” four times. In Paul’s Epistles we learn that members of the Body of Christ inherit “the kingdom of God and of Christ” (Ephesians 5:5); that members of the Body of Christ have been transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love. (Colossians 1:13 and 14).
In John’s Record we find the words of the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus, recorded in John 3:3 and 5, that no person can see or enter the kingdom of God without regeneration; that the person who believes in Christ, Who was lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, is born from above, born anew, born of the Spirit, born of water. (John 3:5 to 15). Aside from John 3:3 and 3:5 the only other verse in John in which we find the word ‘kingdom’ is John 18:36. In this verse we have the words of Christ spoken to the heathen judge, Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world: If My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is My kingdom not from hence.”
In Matthew, Mark and Luke we find the word ‘kingdom’ 119 times, in 119 verses. In Matthew we find the ‘kingdom’ mentioned 55 times in 55 verses. In the first thirteen chapters of Matthew we read much about “the gospel of the kingdom,” about “the kingdom of heaven.” We have in the thirteenth chapter seven ‘kingdom’ parables. In the sixth chapter we have the ‘Our Father’ prayer, with the petition, “Thy kingdom come.” In the fifth, sixth and seventh and eighth chapters of Matthew we find the “Beatitudes,” “the Sermon on the Mount,” the “Golden Rule.” In those chapter we find more than fifty commands of Christ, including various religion ceremonies and ordinances given for the obedience and practice of Christ’s disciples and other Israelites.
Now by way of comparison and contrast: in the first thirteen chapters of John’s Record, we find nothing of the sayings and doings of Christ, His apostles and other Israelites which are recorded in the first thirteen chapters of Matthew, except in the thirteen chapters of Matthew and the thirteen chapters of John the record of the life and ministry and message of John the Baptist, which was for Israel. (Luke 1:16 . . . Luke 1:80 . . . Acts 13:24 . . Acts 18:25 . . . Acts 19:4). Even in this recorded ministry of John the Baptist more than fifty percent of the facts related in John’s Record are not recorded in Matthew. Matthew mentions the name ‘JOHN’ twenty-six times; twenty-three times referring to John the Baptist, three times to the apostle John, the son of Zebedee. More than seventy percent of what Matthew tells us concerning John the Baptist is not found in John’s Record. John mentions the name ‘JOHN’ twenty times in his Record; all twenty times referring to John the Baptist. The apostle John does not mention himself by the name ‘JOHN’ in his Gospel or in his three Epistles; but he does five times in Revelation. In John’s Record the apostle John calls himself, “one of the disciples whom Jesus loved,” “that disciple whom Jesus loved,” “that other disciple.” Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is presenting, in John’s Record, the eternal Incarnate Word as the Apostle and High Priest of our confession” (Hebrews 3:1), the disciples of Christ are not called ‘apostles’ in this Record.
Again by way of comparison and contrast: whereas in Matthew the Lord Jesus imposed upon His disciples and other Israelites more than fifty ceremonies, religious observances and commands which had their rightful place under the reign of law, the principal thing that the disciples and other Israelites were to do in John’s Record was to “believe.” The word “believe” is found one hundred times in John’s Record. We do learn in John 3:22, in just one short verse, that the disciples of Jesus were baptizing. We do not have any record of what they preached or what they were told to preach, as we have in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In John’s Record we do not have any mention of miracles performed by the twelve, as we do in the other three Records.
Instead of laying down the law to Israelites as in the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule and the kingdom parables, we read these words in John 6:28 and 29: “Then said they unto Him (Jesus), What shall we do that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe in Him Whom He hath sent.” Then in John 16:7 to 10 we learn that the Holy Spirit was to be sent to convict condemned sinners of the sin of unbelief; “because they believe not on Me (Christ).” The Holy Spirit was to convict or reprove them of righteousness, because Christ was going back to His Father. (John 16:10). Here we might mention the fact that this future ‘righteousness’ in John 16:10 is the only mention of ‘righteousness’ in John’s Record. Salvation is mentioned just once, in the words Jesus spoke to the woman in Samaria; “Salvation is of the Jews.” (John 4:22). Jesus is called ‘Saviour’ just once in John’s Record, and that by Samaritans, who were saved during Christ’s visit to their city: “we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” (John 4:42).
We certainly learn in Matthew, Mark and Luke that sin is the transgression of the law. But in John’s Record we read the words of Christ, “if ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins” . . . “he that believeth in Him (Christ) is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 8:24 and John 3:18).
WHAT GOSPEL IN JOHN’S RECORD?
In the first verses of the third chapter of John’s Record we learn of the ‘good news’ by which a believer enters into the kingdom of God. In I Corinthians 6:9 to 11 we learn how believing sinners inherit the kingdom of God. So we may conclude that the gospel by which a believer enters or inherits the kingdom of God is the gospel of the kingdom. But surely we have learned by comparing Matthew and John that different phases of the ‘kingdom’ are presented in these two Records. As we analyze John’s Record, which is a very difficult task, we may think of Paul’s words in Acts 20:24 and 25: “that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify ‘the gospel of the grace of God’ . . . “I have gone preaching ‘the kingdom of God’.” Paul had preached Jews and Gentiles into the kingdom of God, into the Body of Christ, with “the gospel of the grace of God.” (Galatians 1:11 and 12). The risen Lord never instructed Paul to preach to Gentiles what He instructed Peter to preach to Israel on the day of Pentecost. When Peter preached to Israel Acts 2:38 and Acts 3:17 to 21 there was ‘grace’ in the propositions, but “the gospel of grace” is different from Acts 2:38 and Acts 3:17 to 21.
In Luke 2:40 we read that the grace of God was upon the Child Jesus. In Luke 4:22 we read of the ‘gracious’ words which proceeded out of the mouth of Jesus. As we think of these two statements concerning the Lord Jesus Christ we should think of the wonderful truth of II Corinthians 8:9, “ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye, through His poverty might be rich.” Christians, who know that they are saved by grace, without religious deeds or good works, delight to join with Paul in the wonderful ‘grace’ truth of Ephesians 1:6 and 7: “to the praise of the glory of God’s ‘grace’, wherein He hath ‘graced’ us in the Beloved, In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” In this Epistle to the Ephesians we find the word ‘grace’ thirteen times. In the Epistle to the Romans we find the word ‘grace’ twenty-two times. Unto Paul was given ‘grace’ to preach to Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. (Ephesians 3:8). Paul declared that he was what he was by the grace of God; and that that grace was not bestowed upon him in vain; for he laboured more abundantly than all others. Paul said, in I Corinthians 15:10: “not I but the grace of God that was with me.”
After we have read Paul’s Epistles and permitted the Holy Spirit to teach us the meaning of Ephesians 3:1 to 3, that Paul was the prisoner of Jesus Christ for Gentiles and was given the responsibility of making known “the dispensation of the grace of God,” we certainly should know that Paul was the Lord’s ‘grace’ messenger. Paul used the word ‘grace’ about one hundred times in Acts and in his fourteen Epistles. Through the apostle Paul, the risen, glorified Christ revealed to the human race His all-sufficient, over-abounding grace for sinner and for saint. (Romans 5:20 and II Corinthians 9:8). Wonderful truth is revealed in Romans 3:24 to 28, that any kind of a sinner, who receives Christ as Saviour, is justified freely (without a cause) by God’s grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; without the deeds of the law. In Romans 4:4 and 5 we learn that by God’s grace: “to him that worketh not, but believeth in Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” This we learn also in II Corinthians 5:21 and in Romans 10:9 and 10.
Paul, who used the word ‘grace’ about one hundred times, used the words “righteousness,” “reconciliation,” “redemption,” “forgiveness,” “salvation,” “justification,” “hope,” about two hundred times. Five of these words are not found in John’s Gospel—”salvation” once—”righteousness” once.
SIN AND GRACE IN JOHN’S RECORD
In John 5:24 and 25 and in John 8:24 and in John 11:25 and 26 we learn that the unbeliever is dead in sin. However in these same verses, and in many others in John, we learn that where sin abounded grace did much more abound. In John’s Message we learn the truth of Romans 5:21: “that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
In Romans 4:15 we learn that “the law worketh wrath.” In II Corinthians 3:7 we learn that the law is “the ministration of death.” In John 1:17 we read, “the law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Then in John 20:31 we read why the Spirit directed John to write the Record of the life and ministry, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ: “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing, ye might have life through His Name.”
In the first chapter of John we begin with the Lord Jesus Christ as eternal God, the Creator of all things. In John 1:11 Christ is the Stone rejected by the Builders (Israel). (Psalm 118:21 to 25 . . . Matthew 21:42). In John 1:29 Christ is the Lamb of God Who beareth away the sin of the world. In John 1:14 we read that the ‘Incarnate Word’ was full of grace and truth. In John 1:16 we read: “of His fulness have all we received and grace upon grace.” Hear Christ’s testimony in John 10:10: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Presently we want to explain why we call “The Gospel of John,” “The Book of Life.” In John’s Message we have abounding grace and life more abundant for believers; Divine sonship for as many as receive Christ, to them that believe on His Name. (John 1:12 and 13).
GRACE IN MATTHEW, MARK AND LUKE
We quoted Luke 2:40 and 4:22 describing the grace of our Lord Jesus. But with the exception of these two statements, in all of the 2902 verses in Matthew, Mark and Luke, we do not find the word ‘grace’ one time. Most assuredly we find the manifestations of grace in those three Books. But God’s people should know the difference between ‘grace’ in “the gospel of the kingdom” and under the reign of law; that is, grace in former dispensations, and the present “dispensation of the grace of God for Gentiles” in which we have presented to us the wonderful grace message of II Timothy 1:9.
Shortly before the apostle Paul departed to be with Christ, at the time he testified that he had finished his course, kept the faith and fought a good fight (II Timothy 4:3 to 7) , he wrote II Timothy 1:9 to 11: “God, Who hath saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began: But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel. Whereunto I (Paul) am appointed a preacher, and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles.” When the apostle Paul said that the Man Christ Jesus, the one Mediator, gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in ‘due time’, he also added, “whereunto I (Paul) am ordained a preacher, an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles.” The ‘due time’ for the Gentiles was not at the time the Lord Jesus said, in Matthew 15:24, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel, when He said to His twelve apostles, in Matthew 10:3 to 8, “go not into the way of the Gentiles.” Here let us compare Romans 15:8 and 16, in which verses we read that Jesus Christ was a Minister to the Jews and the apostle Paul was the minister to the Gentiles. There was a real difference between the gospel Christ on earth preached and the ‘grace’ gospel He gave by revelation to Paul. (Galatians 1:11 and 12).
We are told that Matthew was written within a few years after the death and resurrection of Christ, perhaps before Peter preached to Cornelius, the Gentile (Acts 10:34). We are told that Paul died about 68 A.D., about two years before the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and killed many Jews, in fulfillment of Matthew 22:7. We are told that John did not write his ‘GOSPEL’ until at least twenty years after Jerusalem was destroyed.
It will prove most interesting and informative to compare the messages of Christ and His apostles in Matthew with the message of unmixed grace in Paul’s last Epistle, Second Timothy. Surely the careful, spiritual, intelligent student of the Scriptures has learned that, in Matthew, Jesus of Nazareth was in the midst of Israel, under the law, presenting some of the principles and benefits of the New Covenant, preaching a mixture of law and grace to “the children of the kingdom.” (Matthew 8:12 . . . Matthew 5:17 and 18 . . . Matthew 23:1 to 3 . . . Galatians 4:4 . . . Acts 13:23).
Near the close of the Book of Matthew the Lord Jesus refers to Himself as “The STONE”; to Israel, as “the builders,” reminding them of Psalm 118:21 to 25. The builders were rejecting the “STONE” (Matthew 21:42), but that rejection was the Lord’s doing. Inasmuch as we learn by studying Matthew, Mark and Luke that Israel’s Messiah was repeatedly reminding the ‘builders’ of their obligation to the law, we know that, had any disciple of Christ taught “the children of the kingdom,” during the days that Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good in the land of the Jews (Acts 10:38 and 39), “ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14) (Colossians 2:16), that disciple would have been out of the will of God.
BACK TO PENTECOST—ON TO PERFECTION
Many Christian workers today like the slogan, “back to Jesus,” and prepare their messages according to their slogan. They mean well. We can understand why the Modernists and other unsaved church-member delight to find their so-called “social gospel” in Matthew, why they prefer to have very little to do with John’s Record. But evangelical Christians, who are eager to see sinners saved and who labour with zeal and enthusiasm, know that they have a very difficult task when they endeavour to preach from Matthew salvation by grace to Gentiles. They know, or should know, the great difference between Matthew 15:21 to 27 and Romans 10:12 to 16. In these first Scriptures the Lord Jesus, sent only to Israel, speaks of the Jews as ‘children’, of the Gentiles as ‘dogs’. In Romans 10:12 we read that there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles. After reading the eleventh chapter of Romans we know that God’s order was no longer “to the Jew ‘FIRST’.” (Romans 1:16 . . . Acts 3:26 . . . Acts 13:46 . . . Mark 7:27). After the truth of the eleventh chapter of Romans was revealed, the Jews, like the Gentiles, had to come to God through Christ as “sons of Adam” and not with special, priority claims as “the children of Abraham.”
Another group of so-called evangelists are as confused as are the “back to Jesus” preachers, the evangelists whose slogan is, “back to Pentecost.” God’s instructions are “on to perfection” (Hebrews 6:1 to 4), which means on to Ephesians 4:7 to 14 and on to Romans 16:25. To better understand this principle of progressive revelation let us carefully consider the experience of an eloquent messenger who was, through ignorance, preaching a Bible message which was not up to date. In Acts 18:1 to 3 we find the apostle Paul abiding in the home of a fellow-tentmaker, Aquila, who also was a Jew. Priscilla was the wife of Aquila. This Jew and his wife were driven out of Rome, together with other Jews. Then later on they went back to Rome. Paul referred to them as “helpers in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 16:3). If they were Paul’s helpers, surely we know that Paul was their helper and their ‘grace’ teacher in Christ Jesus. At the time Paul was living in their house (Acts 18:3) Paul had received the gospel of grace by revelation from the Lord Jesus. (Galatians 1:11 and 12). Think of the privilege that Aquila and Priscilla enjoyed, learning the Lord’s new message from Paul and then laboring with Paul to teach the ‘grace’ message to others.
Millions of religious messengers today, many of them saved, do not seem to know what a great spiritual crime it is to pervert the ‘grace’ gospel, with religious doings and law-keeping, and thus subvert souls and corrupt the minds of believers and unbelievers from the simplicity that is in Christ (Acts 15:24 . . . Galatians 1:7 to 10 . . . II Corinthians 11:1 to 3).
Note the experience of the eloquent preacher. His name was Apollos We read concerning him in Acts 18:24 to 28: “And a certain Jew name Apollos, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus This man was instructed in the way of the Lord: and being fervent in the Spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord.” Thus far splendid. How the Lord needs such messengers today! But. But what Note the last statement in verse 25, “knowing only the baptism of John.” His slogan was not only “back to Pentecost and Acts 2:38,” “back to Marl 16:16,” “back to Jesus and the gospel of the kingdom,” but “back to John the Baptist and baptism unto repentance for the remission of sins.” Then a great change took place. Apollos was taught the difference between then ‘kingdom’ message of John the Baptist and the twelve apostles and the ‘grace’ message which the risen Christ revealed to and through the apostle Paul.
We read in Acts 18:26 what Aquila and Priscilla did after they had hear Apollos preach: “they took him unto them and expounded unto them the way of God more perfectly.” Then Apollos became a real help to those, who, with him, believed through grace. (Acts 18:27).
There are thousands upon thousands of eloquent preachers today, and some who are not eloquent, who are fervent and zealous, who teach diligently salvation by repentance toward God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and by baptism with or in water. Many of them are mighty in their favorite Scriptures, interpreting all salvation messages in the light of Mark 16:16 and Acts 2:38 and Acts 22:16. They dogmatically contend for water baptism in John 3:5, “born of water;” in Romans 6:3 and 4, “water baptized into Christ’s death” and “buried with Him by water baptism.” They interpret Galatians 3:27, Colossians 2:12 and Ephesians 4:5 as water baptism. Many of them even read water into Titus 3:5 and 6. They apparently have no desire to understand the meaning of Romans 11:11; that when and because of the ‘FALL’ of Israel, salvation was sent to the Gentiles in a new way, at which time God ushered in a new spiritual program and dispensation, “the dispensation of the grace of God for Gentiles” (Ephesians 3:1 to 3). Up to the time the risen Christ revealed this eternal purpose of God to and through the apostle Paul, it was called “The Mystery of Christ.” In their Bibles it is plainly stated that the kingdom, which Christ will establish on earth when He returns as the Son of man, will be God’s kingdom prepared ‘from’ the overthrow of the world (Matthew 25:34), whereas the Body of Christ, into which believing Jews and Gentiles are reconciled by the cross (Ephesians 2:15 and 16), into Which they are baptized by the Holy Spirit, was purposed by God, in Christ, ‘from before’ the overthrow of the world. (Ephesians 1:4 and 5). Not knowing this difference, they make no attempt to obey Ephesians 3:9, “make all (saints) see what is the dispensation of the mystery.” They do not believe Paul’s testimony in I Corinthians 3:10; that by the grace of God he was appointed the Lord’s chief builder (head-carpenter) to lay the foundation. They prefer Peter’s Keys of the Kingdom. Their favorite verse in the Bible is Mark 16:16.
These religious, confused messengers may be like Apollos in several ways; but unlike Apollos, they are not unprejudiced and humble enough to be led in the way of God more perfectly, and learn that there is almost as much difference between “the gospel of the kingdom” preached by Peter and the Eleven, in Acts 2:38, “before the Fall of Israel,” and the message preached by Paul in Titus 3:4 to 8, “after the FALL of Israel (Romans 11:11 and 12),” as there is between law and grace.
As we diligently, prayerfully and thoroughly study Matthew, Mark, Luke and the ministry of the twelve apostles in the first chapters of the Book of Acts, when it was unlawful for the apostles to preach to Gentiles (Acts 10:28 . . . Acts 11:19), we certainly know that the Gentiles were not receiving Divine mercy because of Israel’s unbelief, as in Romans 11:30; that the believing Gentiles were not rich because of the diminishing and fall of Israel. (Romans 11:12).
Inasmuch as we read that thousands of Jews were saved from Pentecost on (Acts 2:41 . . . Acts 4:4 . . . Acts 5:14 . . . Acts 6:7 . . . Acts 9:42), we know that Peter could not have truthfully said at the time he preached to the household of Cornelius what Paul said some years later concerning Israel: “the election hath obtained it (righteousness); but the rest were blinded.” (Romans 11:7). Then Paul proclaimed the mystery of Romans 11:25, that a blindness in part had happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. Then what? Then Old Testament prophecy will be fulfilled, and God’s ‘kingdom’ nation (Israel) will be saved. (Romans 11:26 to 29).
Every minister of Christ should search the Scriptures diligently to learn why after the Lord chose Peter’s mouth to preach to Gentiles (Acts 15:6 . . . Acts 10:34 . . . Acts 11:18) He sent Peter to the Jews (Galatians 2:9) and why He raised up an apostle, who was not one of the ‘twelve’, to be the apostle to the Gentiles. (Romans 11:13). Read the setting of Paul’s statement that he glorified his office as the apostle of the Gentiles, by reading the verses immediately preceding his statement in Romans 11:13, and the verses immediately following. The setting is very important. We should interpret John 1:11 in the light of all we have stated in the past few paragraphs.
THE BUILDERS TWICE REJECTED THE STONE
In John 1:11 we read that Christ’s own did not receive Him. Presently we shall comment on Psalm 118:21 to 24 and Matthew 21:42 and John 12:37 to 40, concerning Israel’s rejection of Christ. When Israel rejected Christ and delivered Him to Pilate for crucifixion and death, the Lord Jesus said, “this is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Matthew 21:42). Then we read in Acts 5:31 and 32 that the Lord sent the Holy Spirit to witness that He had raised Christ from the dead to be Israel’s Prince and Saviour. When Israel rejected the resurrected Prince and Saviour and God cast them away He sent reconciliation to the Gentiles. (Romans 11:15). Then Paul broke forth in different language saying, “this is the Lord’s doing.” Note what Paul said in Romans 11:33 and 34.
There is a sense in which there is a difference between the new birth of John 3:3 to 8 and the new creation of II Corinthians 5:17, yet believing sinners today are saved by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit shed upon them abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour. (Titus 3:5 to 8). Millions of believing sinners have been preached into the Body of Christ by God’s messengers who have preached “ye must be born anew” and the explanation in John 3:5 to 16.
There are some Bible-teachers, who admit that millions have been preached into the Body of Christ by hearing truth contained in John’s Gospel, but who state that John himself did not become a member of that Body. They attempt to prove this by Galatians 2:7 to 9.
It is true that the apostle John and the apostle Peter labored together before and after the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. (Acts 3:1 to 11). Then in Galatians Peter and John seemed to be pillars in Jerusalem. (Galatians 2:9). Unto Peter was committed ‘the gospel of the circumcision’. (Galatians 2:7). However Paul made Peter acknowledge the truth of Galatians 2:16, “that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we who have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” If Peter or John preached any other gospel than Galatians 2:16 after Paul condemned Peter, they should have been disqualified and removed from service. In I Corinthians 1:10 to 13 we learn that the Holy Spirit certainly was against a divided Church, a ‘Peter’ Church and a ‘Paul’ Church. After Peter preached to Cornelius and Paul uttered the words of Acts 13:46 every believer whether Jew or Gentile, whatever we call the gospel they heard and believed, became members of the Body of Christ. (I Corinthians 12:13). In I Corinthians 12:13 we read that believing Jews and believing Gentiles were baptized by ONE SPIRIT into ONE BODY: The Bible-teachers, who contend that Peter and John never became members of the Body of Christ, likewise contend that the believing Jews and Gentiles saved under the preaching of the twelve apostles did not become members of the ONE BODY. This would include John Mark and Barnabas and Silas; and yet these three men laboured with Paul when Paul was preaching believing Jews and Gentiles into the Body.
WHEN WERE BELIEVERS BAPTIZED BY THE SPIRIT INTO THE BODY?
When we read in John 3:5 that believers had to be born of the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God, and read with this John 7:38 to 40 that the Holy Spirit had not yet been given because Christ had not yet been glorified (John 16:7), we may wonder how any one could have been born of the Spirit before Pentecost. When we read Matthew 15:24 and Matthew 10:5 that Christ and His apostles were sent to Jews and not to Gentiles, and know that faith cometh by hearing the Word, we know that believing Gentiles were not being baptized by ONE SPIRIT into ONE BODY while the Lord Jesus was in the land of the Jews as Jesus of Nazareth. (Acts 10:38 and 39).
From John 1:12 and 13 and John 10:28 and John 17:2 we would judge that at the time the Lord Jesus gave believing Jews the power to become the sons of God and gave to them eternal life, they were the sons of God and had eternal life before the historic beginning of the Church, Which is the Body of Christ.
If John’s Gospel was written that the readers might believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and believing might have life through His Name (John 20:31), and if John did not write until years after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. and the Jews were scattered, it would seem that two generations of Jews died without having the opportunity to read John’s Record, and be convinced. Moreover we do not know whether John’s Gospel was in written form to send out to the third and fourth generation of Jews, so that they might read it and believe that Jesus was the Son of God and their Messiah. Surely the great majority of the present-day Jews will not study this marvelous Record or even read it. They still prefer Moses to Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. So with all of their religious activities, with millions of dollars invested in their synagogues, the Jews are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18). If the Lord Jesus should speak to them to-day, He would say what He said to the unbelieving Jews in John 8:44, to those Jews who denied His eternal Deity: “ye are of your father the devil.” “He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father Who hath sent Him.” (John 5:23).
In the fourth chapter of John’s First Epistle we read, in verses nine, ten and fourteen, that God the Father sent His Son. It is interesting to note that in this fourth chapter of First John the word ‘love’ is found twenty-seven times. We can understand why Christ, in Colossians 1:13, is called “the Son of God’s love.”
In Matthew 3:17 and 17:5, in Mark 1:11 and 9:7, in Luke 3:22 and 9:35, we read that the Father spoke from heaven concerning Christ; “This is My Beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.” Surely the Father was well pleased with all that the Son did and said in John’s Gospel, which is indeed a message of love; and yet in John’s Record the Father did not speak from heaven concerning His well-beloved Son.
There is a difference of opinion among Bible students as to whether Christ (about 33 A.D.) spoke the words of John 3:16, that God so love that He gave, or the apostle John was led to declare the truth of John 3:16 fifty-seven years later. Then John the Baptist uttered Divine truth in this third chapter of John. It is no easy task to know, as to all the verses whether, the apostle John, the Lord Jesus or John the Baptist was speaking But we read in John 3:35: “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given al things into His hands.”
We read in John 3:17 that God, the Father, ‘sent’ His Son. We read in John 3:16 that He ‘gave’ His Son. We read in John 6:38 and 42, John 3:13, John 8:42, John 16:28, John 17:8 and John 18:37, the testimony of God’s Son, “I came.’ In John 10:28, John 6:27 and 51 we read the words of Christ, “I give.” In John 10:11 we read Christ’s words: “the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” “I am come that they might have life . . . more abundantly.” (John 10:10). In John 14:27 Christ gave peace.
God, the Father, did speak from heaven when His Son said, glorify Thy Name.” (John 12:28). The voice from heaven replied: “I have both glorified it, and wilt glorify it again.”
Surely now we understand better the meaning of I Timothy 1:15 “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jest came into the world to save sinners.”
CONSIDER THE AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF OUR FAITH
The Holy Spirit, in Hebrews 12:2, instructs believers to look unto Jesus “the Author and Finisher of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Then He adds, “CONSIDER Him Who endured such contradiction of sinners,” the One Who resisted unto blood striving against sin.
As we consider the Author of our faith, let us consider the Greek word here translated ‘Author.’ The word is literally ‘Chief-Leader.’ There is another word translated ‘Author’ in Hebrews 5:9. In Hebrews 5:8 and 9 we learn that the Lord Jesus, through the things which He suffered, being made perfect, “became the ‘Author’ of eternal salvation. The Greek word here translated ‘Author’ means ‘Causer.’
As we think of the Lord Jesus as the ‘Chief-Leader’ of our faith and the ‘Causer’ of eternal salvation, let us think of Him also as the ‘Finisher’ of our faith. The Greek word translated ‘Finish’ is also translated ‘End’ it the Bible. When we read, in Hebrews 7:25, that God is able to save to the ‘Uttermost’ all who come to Him by the Lord Jesus, because the glorified Christ ever makes intercession for them, we think of two other Scriptures; namely Philippians 1:6 and John 13:1. In Philippians 1:6 Christians are given assurance of their eternal security in Christ, being confident of this very thing that He Who began the good work will ‘Perform’ (finish . . consummate . . complete) it unto the day of Jesus Christ. Then John 13:1, “Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, “having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the ‘End’.” The word translated ‘Uttermost’ in Hebrews 7:25 means “all the way to the end.” The word translated ‘Perform’ in Philippians 1:6 has about the same meaning. In John 17:2,12 and 24 we learn what it means to be saved all the way to the end. Christ gave eternal life to those believers whom the Father gave to Him. He kept them while He was in their midst. Then He committed their keeping to His Father. (John 17:15). Then this petition in that great prayer: “that they be with Me where I am; and may behold My glory which Thou hast given Me.”
CONSIDER THE APOSTLE AND HIGH PRIEST OF OUR CONFESSION
As all people on this earth should ‘Consider’ the Lord Jesus as the ‘Author and Finisher of our faith,’ which means to consider Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross of Calvary (Hebrews 12:1 to 5) , we are told in Hebrews 3:1, “Consider ‘the Apostle and High Priest of our confession,’ Jesus Christ.”
There are five different Greek words translated ‘Consider.’ These different Greek words mean, “exercise your mind” . . . “contemplate” . . . “estimate” . . . “reckon thoroughly” . . . “deliberate” . . . “reason.” The world would say, “use your thinker.” But when we read that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned” (I Corinthians 2:14), we know that we have to do more than use our thinkers. Here we are reminded of the instructions of the Holy Spirit, by the pen of he apostle Paul, recorded in II Timothy 2:7 . . . “CONSIDER what I say: and the Lord give thee understanding in all things. . Remember that Jesus Christ. . . was raised from the dead, according to my gospel.”
May the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, give to us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, that the eyes of our understanding may be enlightened. (Ephesians 1:15 to 18).
THE APOSTLE AND HIGH PRIEST IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
Concerning Melchisedec, we are told, in Hebrews 7:4, “Now ‘CONSIDER’ how great this man was. He had neither beginning of days, nor end of life.” (Hebrews 7:3). In Hebrews 6:20 we are told that Jesus is made a High Priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec. In the seventeenth of John we can see this High Priest at work, interceding for all whom the Father had given Him. Note these words of the High Priest to His Father in heaven, uttered in John 11:41 and 42: “Then Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me: and I know that Thou hearest Me always.” This is why He is able to save to the ‘uttermost’ (all-the-way-to-the-end) believers who come to the Father through the Son; those whom the Father gives to the Son.
In the Gospel of John, which begins with the Lord Jesus Christ as the “Incarnate Word,” The One Who was with God in the beginning and Who was God (John 1:1 and 2 and 1:14), we may truly consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus Christ. Moreover in the Gospel of John, in chapters eighteen and nineteen we may consider Him in Gethsemane and on the cross of Calvary, enduring contradiction of sinners and enduring the cross of Calvary. Surely we should consider or contemplate the meaning of the Saviour’s word at the time He yielded up the ghost “Finished.” (John 19:30 and 31). He was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour, that He should by the grace of God taste death for every man. (Hebrews 2:9 and I Peter 3:18).
In making this last statement we think of another ‘CONSIDER;’ the words of Caiaphas, the high priest who apparently did not understand the meaning of his own words when he said, “Nor ‘CONSIDER’ that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not”. . . “he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation (Israel) and not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together it ONE the children of God that were scattered abroad.” (John 11:49 to 52) With this prophecy of Caiaphas we think of the words of John the Baptist in John 1:29; “the next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith Behold the Lamb of God Who beareth away the sin of the world.”
Both of these Scriptures cause us to think of the Lord’s words to the man who was born blind, as recorded in John 9:1 to 7. To this blind man the Apostle of the Father said, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation ‘SENT’). He went and he washed, and came seeing.” (John 9:7). Why did the Holy Spirit give us the words, “which is by interpretation ‘SENT’?” This Greek word translated ‘SENT’ is ‘APOSTELLO.’ The Greek word translated ‘APOSTLE’ is APOSTOLOS.’
The Lord Jesus told religious Nicodemus that he had to be born from above to see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3). Christ told Nicodemus that He (Christ) had to be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and those who believed in Him would be born anew, could see and enter the kingdom of God, and have eternal life. (John 3:13 to 16) Nicodemus had to wash in the ‘Pool of Sent,’ to see.
The man born blind was able to see after he had washed in the pool of Siloam, or the pool of the ‘APOSTLE.’
It is very interesting to note that the word ‘apostle’ is not found in the Gospel of John. The twelve apostles, called ‘apostles’ in Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts, are not called ‘apostles’ in John. They are called ‘disciples.’ But more interesting is the fact that forty-one times, in John’s Record, the Lord Jesus is “THE SENT ONE.” In John Christ speaks of Himself time and again as “Him Who God Hath Sent,” . . . “Him Whom The Father Sent” . . “Him Whom Thou Hast Sent,” “Him Whom He Hath Sent.” About seventeen times the word translated ‘SENT’ is ‘APOSTELLO’. Five times the Lord Jesus uses this word in His prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John. Thus we see that Jesus Christ in John, is the “Apostle and High Priest of our Confession.”
In John 5:36 we have these words of the Father’s Apostle: “The works which the Father hath given Me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me, that ‘THE FATHER HATH SENT (APOSTELLO) ME’.” Here we think of the words of the apostle Paul which he wrote to the Corinthians who denied his apostleship: “truly the signs of an ‘apostle’ were wrought among you . . . in signs and wonders and mighty deeds.” (II Corinthians 12:12). The apostle Paul describes this in detail in Romans 15:16 to 20;, “through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God.” Concerning the twelve apostles of Christ we read, in Acts 5:12: “by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people.” In Hebrews 2:4 again we read that these signs and wonders witnessed that the twelve were Christ’s apostles.
In John 20:21 the Lord Jesus, after His death and resurrection, said to the twelve; “As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.” Christ was the Father’s Apostle. The twelve and Paul were Christ’s apostles. In His prayer to His Father the Lord Jesus said, “As Thou bast ‘SENT’ (APOSTELLO) Me into the world, even so have I also ‘SENT’ (APOSTELLO) them into the world.” (John 17:18).
THE FATHER SENT . . . THE SON CAME
Hear these words of the Lord Jesus, in John 6:38, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that ‘SENT’ Me.”
The Lord Jesus would still say to religious, unsaved church-members, “if God were your Father, ye would love Me: for I proceeded forth and came from God: neither came I of Myself, but He sent Me.” (John 8:42). “Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto Him that sent Me.” (John 7:33).
Less than four years was The Lord of Glory, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, in the midst of Israel, as Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him. (Acts 2:22). But He finished the work which the Father gave Him to do. (John 17:4). Then said the Father’s Beloved Son to His Father, “Now I am no more in the world . . . I come to Thee.” (John 17:11). (John 17:13). “O righteous Father the world hath not known Thee: but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me.” (John 17:25).
There is wonderful news, good news, for sinners in John 3:17 and John 12:47: “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him might be saved.”. . . “For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.”
In order to save the world God’s only begotten Son had to be lifted up on Calvary’s cross, and cry “FINISHED.” Was He tempted to pray to be saved from the agony of Calvary when He said, “shall I say save Me from this hour?” “But for this cause came I unto this hour?” (John 12:27). Then He said, “now is the judgment of this world.” (John 12:31). The Son came down from heaven to do His Father’s will. This meant Gethsemane and Calvary. When the Lord Jesus said, “now I go My way to Him that sent Me” (John 16:5), He knew that He had to be lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. (John 3:14).
The Lord Jesus is indeed the Lamb of God Who beareth away the sin of the world. (John 1:29). Believing sinners are redeemed by the precious shed blood of this spotless Lamb, Who verily was foreordained from the foundation of the world. The shed blood of the Father’s Apostle is indeed ‘the pool of Siloam’. Unbelievers, religious and moral, or otherwise, must remain blind and unregenerated until they wash in that pool.
This is life eternal that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent (apostello). (John 17:3).
I AND FATHER ARE ONE
In John 10:30 we have the testimony of the Lord Jesus, “I and Father are ONE.” Note what followed: “The Jews took up stones to stone Him . . . because that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” Now note John 5:17, the words of the Lord Jesus: “My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” Note what followed: “The Jews sought the more to kill Him . . . because He said also God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.” Again hear this testimony of Christ in John 8:58: “Before Abraham was I AM.” Note what followed: “they took up stones to cast at Him.” After repeated unsuccessful attempts to stone their Messiah to death the Jews said to Pilate: “it is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” (John 18:31). The reason the Jews could not stone Him to death is explained in John 12:32: “The Scripture saith, they shall look on Him Whom they pierced.” (Zechariah 12:10 and Psalm 22:16 . . . Revelation 1:7).
In all of these Scriptures and in the greatest story of the ages recorded in Philippians 2:5 to 11, the truth that Christ Jesus was first in the form of God and then took the form of man to become obedient unto the death of the cross, we think of Christ’s words in John 10:17: “therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again.” In John 13:3 we read that Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that “He was come from God and went to God.” So we can surely believe I John 4:14, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
As we read all of the twenty-one chapters of John’s Gospel we see the truth of I John 4:14, just quoted, running all through the Book, and also the truth of John 1:18: “no man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He had declared Him.” Yes, all through John’s Record the Son is revealing His Father, declaring God’s grace and God’s love, and the truth that the Father and the Son are ONE. (John 17:22). Hear the words of the Son, Who was obedient unto death, Who always did the things that pleased His Father, “the cup which My Father hath given Me shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). The Son’s meat was to do His Father’s will (John 6:38), “to finish the work.” (John 4.34). “The works which the Father gave Me to finish.” (John 5:36). “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” (John 17:4).
After the Lord Jesus had finished His prayer for His disciples He went with them to Gethsemane to be betrayed. In Matthew, Mark and Luke it is recorded that the obedient Son prayed to His Father in Gethsemane; “if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will but thine be done” (Luke 22:42 . . . Mark 14:36 . . . Matthew 26:42). But his prayer is not found in John’s Record. Christ answered His own question in John 12:27. His soul was troubled and He asked, “what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this our.” Note again John 18:11 what the Son said when Peter cut off the ear of Malchus: “Put up thy sword; the cup which My Father hath given Me shall I not drink it?” Christ did indeed drink that cup when He received His baptism on the cross. (Luke 12:50).
When Christ told His Father, in John 17:4, that He had finished the work which His Father gave Him to do, the Saviour knew that Gethsemane and Calvary were ahead of Him. Christ testified in Matthew 26:53 that He could call on His Father for sufficient angels to deliver Him; but He added: ‘How then shall the Scripture be fulfilled, that thus it must be.” (Matthew 26:54). ‘Thus it must be.” “Thus it is written and ‘Thus it behooved Christ to suffer’, and to rise from the dead the third day.” (Luke 24:46). About fifteen years later the apostle Paul said; “Christ must needs have suffered, and risen from the dead.” (Acts 17:3). Note the truth that follows the statement concerning Christ in Hebrews 10:9, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God” . . . “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of he body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10). Christ bare our sins in is own Body on the tree. (I Peter 2:24).
Thus we see the meaning of I John 4:14 and John 6:38; that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world; and the Son came down from heaven to do His Father’s will. The Father loved the Son from before the foundation of the world (John 17:24): and the Father loved the Son for going to the cross (John 10:17), where He, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man. (Hebrews 2:9). Christ suffered on the cross for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. (I Peter 3:18).
We read in Isaiah 53:10, “it pleased the Lord to bruise Him . . . and make His soul an offering for sin.” If this means that it pleased the holy, righteous God, according to His determinate counsel and foreknowledge, to have His only begotten Son put to death on the cross (Acts 2:23), then according to Christ’s words in John 8:29, it pleased that Son to be obedient unto death, it pleased Him to be bruised; for He said, “I do always the things that please Him (the Father).” (John 8:29). Christ died to save sinners, but He died to please the Father. We understand something of His agony in His words in Mark 14:34: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.” In Luke 12:50, as Christ anticipated Calvary, which He called His ‘baptism’, He was straitened till it was accomplished. After Christ bare our sins in His own body on the tree and His Father made His soul an offering for sin His body was buried in Joseph’s tomb. Then Psalm 16:10 was fulfilled: “For Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell; neither will Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.” So we read in Isaiah 53:9 of the ‘deaths’ of Christ. In Hebrews 2:14 and 15 and in II Timothy 1:10 we read that Christ, by His death and resurrection, destroyed Satan’s ‘death’ power and abolished death and in the gospel has brought to light, life and incorruptibility.
It is by the resurrection of Christ from the dead that believers are begotten into a living hope. (I Peter 1:1 to 3). In Romans 10:9 we are told that sinners are saved by confessing Christ as Lord and believing in the heart that God raised Him from the dead. “This Man (Christ) after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 10: 12). We read in Ephesians 1:19 to 23 of God’s “mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies . . . above all power and might . . . and gave Him to be Head over all to the Church, Which is His Body.” In Ephesians 4:10 we read that Christ ascended far above all heavens, that He might fill all things.
Surely we agree with Paul in I Corinthians 15:14 to 18, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is vain . . . our faith is also vain . . . we are yet in our sins.”
THE PARTNERSHIP OF THE FATHER AND THE SON
Hear the words of the Lord Jesus in John 16:15, “All things that the Father hath are Mine.” Again His words to His Father in John 17:10, “And all Mine are Thine; and Thine are Mine.” Note again Christ’s words in John 5:19: “The Son can do nothing of Himself; but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He (the Father) doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” So the Son said, “no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” (John 14:6). The Son proceeded forth and came from the Father: “neither came I of Myself, but He sent Me.” (John 8:42).
It is interesting to note that John mentions the ‘FATHER’ in his five Books about 135 times. In the other 22 Books in the New Testament Scriptures the ‘FATHER’ is mentioned about 120 times. In Paul’s messages God is called ‘OUR FATHER’ seventeen times, ‘THE FATHER’, sixteen times, “The God and FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST,” six times; twice ‘ABBA FATHER’, once each, “The FATHER OF GLORY,” “The FATHER OF SPIRITS,” “The FATHER OF MERCIES.” The word ‘FATHER’ is used about 66 times in Matthew, Mark and Luke, referring to God, the Father. In John’s Gospel God is called ‘FATHER’ about 122 times. Surely in John’s Gospel the Father is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In John’s Gospel the Son calls God, ‘MY FATHER’ seventeen times; ‘THE FATHER’ sixteen times. He calls Him, ‘HOLY FATHER’ (John 17:11), ‘RIGHTEOUS FATHER’ (John 17:25). When the Lord Jesus said to His disciples in John 16:28; “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world and go to the Father,” the disciples told the Saviour that He was not speaking in proverbs, but “now speakest Thou plainly.” In John 14:10 the Son declared that the Father was dwelling in Him and working in Him.
John’s Gospel is truly the story of the Father and the Son. In this Record Christ is called twice “the Only Begotten Son”; eleven times, “the SON of GOD”; twelve times, “the SON of Man”; fifteen times “THE SON,” also “His SON” and “THY SON.” Forty-four times in John’s Gospel Christ is called ‘SON’. John’s Gospel was written that we might believe John 20:31 and I John 4:14; “that Jesus is the Christ, ‘The SON OF GOD’, and believing, have life through His Name”; “that the FATHER sent the SON to be the Saviour of the world.”
MY FATHER WORKETH HITHERTO AND I WORK
I DO ALWAYS THE THINGS THAT PLEASE HIM.
As we seek to understand the full meaning of the statement of God’s Son, in John 5:17, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” and His statement in John 8:29, “The Father hath not left Me alone: for I do always those things that please Him,” let us have in mind the testimony of the Psalmist: “It is time for Thee Lord, to ‘work’, for they have broken Thy law.” (Psalm 119:126). Let us also have in mind Isaiah 53:6 to 10, from which we quote these words: “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him: He hath put Him to grief” . . . “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
With these Old Testament Scriptures in mind we are ready for the study of the work and ministry of the Father’s Only Begotten Son between John 1:29, “behold the Lamb of God Who beareth away the sin of the world,” and John 19:30, the words of the Lamb of God bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, His soul being made an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:10), “it is finished;” “and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.”
We think of the words of the Lord Jesus, at the age of twelve, when He asked His mother, “wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business” (Luke 2:49)? Then His words the day of His agony in Gethsemane when He said to Peter, “put up thy sword: the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). The Son of God’s love testified in John 17:24 that His Father loved Him before the foundation of the world. He testified in John 10:17, “therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again.” So the Lord Jesus was here on earth to be about His Father’s business and to drink the cup which His Father gave Him.
We read several times in John’s Record that the Lord Jesus knew all things (John 21:17 . . . John 4:25 . . . John 2:25 . . . John 6:64 . . . John 16:30 . . . John 13:1 to 3). In Colossians 2:3 we read concerning the Lord Jesus, “in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Therefore we may be sure that the Saviour knew that He was foreordained to be God’s spotless Lamb to bear away the sin of the world, and then be raised from the dead. (John 2:19).
When His weary, hungry disciples tried to interest their Saviour in eating, He said, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to ‘finish’ His work.” (John 4:34). This testimony He confirmed in John 6:38, “for I come down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” Hear Him again as He looked upon the poor unfortunate man born blind: “I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work.” (John 9:4). As we learn in connection with these statements of the Lord Jesus all that He was doing, according to the record, we catch something of the meaning of His words in Matthew 20:28, “even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
During the past few months the writer has spent more than two hundred hours reading and studying John’s Record of the earthly ministry of Christ. However we need spend only a few hours of serious, prayerful study of this Record to see how true were the words spoken by Christ in John 8:29:
I DO ALWAYS THE THINGS THAT PLEASE HIM
Between the day the Lord Jesus testified that He came to give Himself a ransom for many and the day Paul wrote that Christ Jesus gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time (I Timothy 2:4 to 7), great changes had taken place in God’s dealing with Israel and with the Gentiles. The risen Lord did not direct Paul to say very much about the sayings and doings of the Saviour during the years he was Jesus of Nazareth in the midst of Israel. Paul reasoned with the Jews from their Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus was what Nathanael said about Him, “Rabbi Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.” (John 1:49). This we learn in Acts 9:20 . . . Acts 17:3. In Acts 20:35 Paul quoted words spoken by the Lord Jesus on earth. In I Timothy 6:13 Paul declared that Christ Jesus, before Pilate witnessed a good confession. Several times the apostle Paul spoke of the birth of the Saviour, which he mentioned in connection with His death and resurrection, but little or nothing of His sayings or doings in the land of the Jews as Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps this is explained in II Corinthians 5:16. When Paul urged Christians, not to please themselves, but others, he reminded them of Christ, Who “pleased not Himself; but, as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell on Me.” (Romans 15:3).
It is not easy to understand the meaning of Hebrews 5:8 and 9: “though He (Christ) was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the Author (Causer) of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.” Surely we find the Lord Jesus in John’s Record, as the Author of eternal salvation. “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4). Hear Christ in His prayer to His Father, in John 17:1 and 2: “glorify Thy Son, as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.”
As we diligently study the twenty-one chapters of John we are reminded of Romans 8:3, “for what the law (the ten commandments) could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” The Lord said to His religious, ‘kingdom’ nation: “did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill Me?”. . . “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” (John 5:45 to 47). With these solemn words of the Son of God read the words which the risen Christ gave Paul to speak to the! religious Jews in their synagogue some years after Christ had gone back to heaven: “For they that dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him (Christ) not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him; and though they found no cause of death in Him, yet desired they Pilate that He should be slain.” (Acts 13:27 and 28).
Surely we understand more of the meaning of Psalm 119:126, “it is time for Thee, Lord, to work; for they have broken Thy law.” The law demanded righteousness, right living, right doing, right thinking. The Psalmist was saying, in different language, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in God’s sight. (Romans 3:20. Galatians 2:16). No child of Adam can earn righteousness.
IN THE FORM OF GOD
In the first chapter of John’s Record we read that the Lord Jesus is called, “The Word”. The Word was with God. The Word was God. The Word was the Creator of all things. (John 1:1 to 3 . . . 1:10). Then we read in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” In John 1:29 He is called ‘JESUS’ “The Lamb of God Who beareth away the sin of the world. Then in John 2:19 the Lord Jesus predicts that He will raise His body from death or destruction.
So in the first chapter of John and in John 2:19 we have the truth of Philippians 2:5 to 11, which has been called “the greatest story of the ages” “Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery ( a thing to be grasped after) to be equal with God. But made Himself of no reputation (emptied Himself), and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a NAME which is above every name, that at the NAME of Jesus; every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The truth of Philippians 2:5 to 11 is told, in different language, in the Epistles to the Hebrews. Note Hebrews 1:1 and 2 concerning the One, by Whom God made the worlds, “Who being the effulgence of His glory, and the express image of His Person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Note the Father’s words to the Son, in Hebrews 1:8, “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” Then Hebrews 2:9; “We see ‘JESUS’, Who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour: that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” He partook of flesh and blood, that He, through death, might destroy Satan’s death power. (Hebrews 2:14). In Hebrews 13:20 we read that God brought from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep. And we read in Hebrews 12:24 that believers have come to ‘JESUS’, the Mediator of the New Covenant.
Again the greatest story of the ages is told in Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians. We read in Colossians 1:15 to 21, that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God; that by Him and for Him all things were created. He is before all things and by Him all things consist. It pleased the Father that in Him all fulness should dwell (Colossians 1:19), yes all of the fulness of the God-Head bodily (Colossians 2:9). The Lord Jesus made peace through the blood of His cross. (Colossians 1:20). In Colossians 3:1 we read that Christ is seated far above on the right hand of God. Every knee should bow to the Christ of Colossians. As we read Colossians 3:17 we know that Paul truly believed what Christ said in John 5:23 and John 12:26. Note Colossians 3:17, “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the NAME of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father by Him.” Now the words of the Son of God, in John 5:23 and 12:26: “That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father Which hath sent Him” . . . “If any man serve Me, him will My Father honour.”
Many religious people will learn too late the truth of John 14:6 and II John 9. Christ said, “no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” (John 14:6). “Whosoever abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God.” (II John 9).
At the NAME of ‘JESUS’ every knee should bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. We are told in Romans 10:9 and 10, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
We read these words which the Holy Spirit directed Peter to preach, in Acts 2:36, “let all of the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus Whom ye have crucified both ‘LORD’ and ‘CHRIST’.” It is interesting to note that the title ‘LORD’, referring to Deity, is found more than 700 times in the New Testament Scriptures; that the word ‘CHRIST’ is found more than 570 times. It is likewise interesting to note the apostle Paul, in His ‘ACTS’ ministry and in his fourteen Epistles, used the Name ‘JESUS’ about the same number of times the Name ‘JESUS’ is found in the twenty-one chapters of John. There is this difference, however, in John’s Record the single Name ‘JESUS’ is used about 250 times without other titles; whereas in Paul’s ministry the single Name ‘JESUS’, without titles, is used only 22 times, eight of which are in Hebrews. There is a dispensational lesson for us in the first two times the apostle Paul used the single word ‘JESUS’; in Acts 13:23 and 13:33 and 34.
The Lord called Himself “JESUS OF NAZARETH” at the time Saul (Paul) was converted. (Acts 22:8). Then just once Paul called the Saviour, “JESUS OF NAZARETH.” (Acts 26:9). Peter called Him “JESUS OF NAZARETH” in Acts 2:22, and in Acts 10:38. He called Him “JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH” in Acts 3:6 and 4:10. Some one else called Him “JESUS OF NAZARETH” in Acts 6:14. The Saviour is called “JESUS OF NAZARETH” in John 1:45, 18:5 and 19:19. In Matthew, Mark and Luke He is called “JESUS OF NAZARETH” eight times. So in all of the New Testament Scriptures the Saviour is called “JESUS OF NAZARETH” twenty-seven times.
It is significant that the Lord Jesus in His relation to the Church, Which is His Body, is never called “Jesus of Nazareth” or “The Son of man.” This may be explained in II Corinthians 5:16.
The Saviour is not called “The Lord Jesus Christ” in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. In Paul’s ministry He is called more than 110 times “The Lord Jesus” or “The Lord Jesus Christ,” or “Jesus Christ The Lord.” He is not called “Christ Jesus” in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. In these four Records He is called “JESUS CHRIST” five times, and “JESUS, THE CHRIST” five times. Here we think of John 20:31 and Acts 2:36: “These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and believing ye might have life through His Name”. . . “Let all of the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same ‘JESUS’ Whom ye have crucified both ‘LORD’ and ‘CHRIST.’
The title that all Christians should use today is the title used by Peter in II Peter 1:11, “Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”, or by Paul, in Titus 1:4, “The Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour.” The apostle Paul called the Saviour, “Jesus Christ” and “Christ Jesus” more than 100 times. Perhaps, there is some reason why sometimes ‘Christ’ before Jesus, and other times ‘Jesus’ before Christ. Then many, many times Paul called the Saviour by the single title ‘Christ’, about 225 times. The total number of times the NAME ‘JESUS’ in the New Testament is about 977.
CALL HIS NAME ‘JESUS’
In Matthew 1:1 our Saviour is called ‘Jesus Christ’; in Matthew 1:17 He is called ‘Christ’. In 1:18 we are told, “the birth of ‘Jesus Christ’ was on this wise.” The Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him that Mary would be with child by the Holy Spirit and her Son should be called ‘JESUS’; for He shall save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21). The Son was born and called ‘JESUS’. (Matthew 1:25). But in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 He was called “Emmanuel,” which being interpreted is “GOD WITH US.” (Matthew 1:22 and 23). So His first Names in the New Testament Scriptures are “Jesus the Messiah,” “Jesus-Emmanuel.”
The Savour is called “Jesus Christ” in John 1:17: “Jesus,” the Lamb of God, in John 1:29. In John 1:14 Jesus is the “Incarnate Eternal Word.” So the Lord Jesus, in John, is “Emmanuel” and “JESUS”. In John 10:28 to 33 we find the religious people of His day trying their utmost to kill Him, with this charge: “Because that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” Not only as a man did He make Himself God; but in the first chapter of John He is God who has been made Man. (John 1:1 and 2 and John 1:14). He is called by the single Name ‘JESUS’ about 250 times in John. At the end of the Book one of His apostles worshipped Him, with “my Lord and My God.” (John 10:28). He was altogether worthy of this worship, for He testified that He had glory with the Father before the world was. (John 17:5). “I and Father are ONE.” (John 10:30).
JESUS CHRIST THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD
In the Record of the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ written by the apostle John that apostle did not call the Lord Jesus, “Saviour.” Some people in Samaria, who came to Jesus through the testimony of the woman who met the Lord Jesus at the well, some who believed in Christ and were saved, said concerning Christ; “we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” (John 4:42).
It is in John’s First Epistle that we find these words which the Holy Spirit directed John to write: “We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the ‘Saviour’ of the world.” (I John 4:14). In John’s Record we find the words of Israel’s high priest in John 11:50 to 52: “Consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not . . . he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation (Israel) . . . and not for that nation only; but also that He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered broad.” The Lord Jesus had said, in John 10:16, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and there shall be one fold (flock) and one Shepherd.” We know from subsequent events that the twelve apostles no more understood this saying of Christ than did Caiphas the high-priest, understand what he said. Caiaphas was led to say in different language what John said, in I John 4:14, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
Because the word ‘world’ is found about 77 times in John’s Record, this Message of John has been called by many “the universal gospel.” In John 1:29 John the Baptist was led to say that Jesus was the Lamb of God who would bear away the sin of the world. The apostle John, in First John 2:2, tells us that Jesus Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. In John 3:16 we read that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
It is interesting to compare John’s statement, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world, with the statement of Peter in Acts 5:31, hat God raised Jesus from the dead to be a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Compare Acts 5:31 and I John 4:14 with Paul’s statement to Israel, in Acts 13:23, that God raised up from David’s seed a Saviour for Israel, Jesus. We surely know there is a difference between Jesus sent to save Israel and Jesus sent to save the world. Many have been unable to reconcile Christ’s statement in Matthew 5:24, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” with John 3:16, “for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son at whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” They prefer the statement in John 3:16 to the statements in Matthew 15:24 and Acts 13:23 and Acts 5:31. So they either ignore Christ’s words in Matthew 15:24 or think perhaps He did not mean what He said.
As we compare Matthew 15:24 with John 3:16, let us consider this interesting fact, the fact that in Matthew 8:1 to 12, Matthew 15:21 to 27, Mark 7:21 27 and in Luke 7:3 to 12 we read that the Lord Jesus ministered to two gentiles of ‘great faith’ while He was Jesus of Nazareth in the midst of Israel, in the land of the Jews. The woman was a very humble Greek. The man was a Roman, a centurion, who loved Israel and built for Israel a synagogue. This centurion asked the elders of Israel to present his urgent request to their Messiah. This story recorded in Luke 7:3 to 12 is most interesting. But what seems so strange is the fact that, although we find the word ‘world’ 77 times in John’s Record, there is no mention of the two Gentiles to whom we have referred. There were certain Greeks, in John’s Record who came to Jerusalem to worship, and said, “sir, we would see Jesus” ( John 12:20 to 22). It seems that their request was not granted. The sum total of the ministry and witness of the Lord Jesus to Gentiles, recorded in John’s Gospel, is told in I Timothy 6:13, that Jesus Christ witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate. The saying of Jesus in John 4:48 seems to be proof that the nobleman of John 4:46 was not the Roman Gentile of Luke 7:1 to 10.
In Matthew 10:5 to 7 we learn that there is a difference between Gentiles and Samaritans. In the fourth chapter of John we learn that Christ must needs go through Samaria, where He had a most fruitful ministry. Nothing of Christ’s work in Samaria is recorded in Matthew, Mark or Luke. It was while the Lord Jesus was in Samaria that He was called “Saviour” the one time in John’s Record. (John 4:42).
We have already mentioned the fact that the word “salvation” is found but one time in John’s Record; and that too is found in Christ’s statement to the woman at the well, in John 4:22, “salvation is of the Jews.” The word “righteousness” is found one time only in John’s Record. In John 16:10 we read that the Holy Spirit would reprove or convict the world of righteousness, because Jesus went to His Father. Not once in John’s Record do we find the words “justification,” “forgiveness,” “redemption,” “reconciliation” and “hope.” In the recorded ministry of the apostle Paul these words, together with “salvation” and “righteousness,” are found more than 200 times. In these words we have the great evangelical Christian doctrines. They are all implied in John’s Record.
We have observed that the word “gospel” is not found once in John’s Record. But in that Record we have the glorious, wonderful gospel of salvation. In John 3:17 we read; “For God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Then again, in John 12:47, the good news from the mouth and heart of the Lord Jesus; “I came not to judge the world; but to save the world.” In between John 3:17 and John 12:47 we see this ‘no condemnation’ saving message in operation. Read John 8:1 to 11, in which verses we find a sinful woman caught in the very act of a sin that was not only condemned by the law but which called for the death penalty. The religious men brought her to Jesus to be stoned to death, according to the law of Moses. The Lord Jesus did not in any way condone or minimize her sin. He asked the woman, what had become of her accusers. They had gone out one by one, as not one of them was qualified to stone her. The Lord Jesus asked her, “doth no man condemn thee?” She replied “no man, Lord.” Then Christ spoke to her troubled conscious and sinful heart the good news of John 3:17 and 12:47, saying to the guilty woman; neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.” (John 8:11). Here we have the combination of Romans 5:20 and Romans 6:1 and 2: “where sin abounded grace did much more abound”. . . “what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.”
Surely all through the Message of John we find the all-sufficient, abounding grace in operation for any and all sinners who were willing to receive that grace which came by Jesus Christ. (John 1:17).
THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED
In the very first chapter of the Gospel of John, in the tenth and eleventh verses, we read that Christ was in the world and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. “He came unto His own (world) and His own (nation) received Him not.” This is confirmed in John 12:37 to 40: “But though He (Christ) had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not in Him: That the saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? . . . Therefore they could not believe, because that Isaiah said again, He (God) hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”
With these statements concerning Israel’s unbelief and blindness, quoted from Isaiah 6:9 and 10, let us think of another prophecy concerning Israel’s rejection of their Messiah. We quote Psalm 118:19 to 24: “Open to me the gates of righteousness. I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord. This gate of the Lord into which the righteous shall enter. I will praise thee: for thou hast heard me, and art become my salvation. The Stone Which the Builders rejected is become the Head of the Corner. This is the Lord’s doing: it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and be glad in it.” The Lord Jesus quoted part of this in Matthew 21:42.
In Matthew 26:24 we have the words of the Lord Jesus, “the Son of man goeth, as it is written of Him.” Again we have His words in John 3:14, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so ‘must’ the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:15). In Acts 4:25 to 29 we learn that the rulers of this world, who crucified the Lord of glory (I Corinthians 2:8), who killed the Prince of life (Acts 3:14 and 15), did none other things than God’s hand and God’s counsel determined before to be done.” It is both interesting and significant to observe that the truth of Matthew 21:42, recorded by Matthew near the end of Christ’s life on earth, concerning Israel’s Messiah being rejected by Israel, is recorded in the very first part of the first chapter of John even before one thing is said about the ministry of the Messiah, Who is introduced to Israel by John the Baptist as “The Lamb of God Who beareth away the sin of the world.” (John 1:11, 12 and 29). This may explain why in Matthew, Mark and Luke very much is said concerning the ministry and message of John the Baptist, but none of these three writers mentions that John called the Lord Jesus “The Lamb of God.”
Let us consider the statement in John 1:11, that Christ came unto His own and His own received Him not, together with Acts 13:29, “when they (Israel) had fulfilled all that was written of Him they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a sepulchre.” “All that was written of Him.” In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John more than ninety times we read such expressions as, “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled,” “that the Word of the prophets might be fulfilled,” “as it is written” “it is written” . . . “all that prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25), “all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” (Luke 24:27 and 44).
When we say that Christ’s own received Him not and then read several times that many Jews believed on Him before His death and resurrection, and that thousands of His own received Him after His death and resurrection (Acts 2:41 and Acts 4:4 and Acts 5:14 . . . and Acts 6:7 and Acts 9:42), we should know that John 1:11 to 13, like Romans 11:5 to 15, refers to something more than acceptance or rejection of Christ by individual Jews. John 1:11 should be studied with Acts 5:29 to 32 and Acts 13:46. And of course John 1:11 should be carefully and prayerfully studied with John 12:37 to 41, which should cause every Christian to break forth with Paul and say, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past-tracing-out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor?” (Romans 11:33 and 34).
Note in Acts 3:12 to 17 that God was willing to charge Israel’s great crime of slaying the Son of God to ignorance. This is explained in Matthew 12:32 and by the prayer of Christ on the cross for Israel (Luke 23:34) Hear this most important statement in Acts 3:18: “Those things which God before hath shown by the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled.” So as we read Christ’s statement in Matthew 26:24 and John 3:14 and this statement in John 12:27; “for this cause came I unto this hour,” let us think also of the statement in Acts 2:23 the God’s only Begotten Son was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. The day on which the Lord Jesus Christ, Who knew no sin, was made sin, that believing sinners might be made the righteousness of God in Him (II Corinthians 5:21), the day on which God spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all (Romans 8:32) thereby providing “so great salvation” (Hebrew 2:3), was “the day which the Lord hath made” . . . “we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:124). Some years after the Lord Jesus appeared once and put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26), and by the grace of God tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9), the apostle Paul said to the Jews in their synagogue, “Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead: and this Jesus Whom I preach unto you is Christ (Messiah).” (Acts 17:3).
From what we have said we should better understand the words, “according to the Scriptures,” when we read in I Corinthians 15:1 to 4 that the gospel, by which believing sinners are saved, is the truth that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day. We are told in plain language, in Romans 4:23 to 25, that any sinner who believes God and receives Christ, believing that He (Christ) was delivered for our sins and raised again for our justification, will receive, by faith without works, the Divine, perfect, unimpeachable righteousness of the righteous God.
THIS IS THE LORD’S DOING
In Acts 5:29 and 30 we learn that God raised up Christ in incarnation, the Seed of Abraham (Hebrews 2:16), the Seed of David, to be Israel’s Saviour. (Acts 13:23). In I John 4:14 we read, “we do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” Did John, in I John 4:14, intentionally contradict what Peter said in Acts 5:30 or what Paul said in Acts 13:23? At the time the Lord Jesus declared that “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10), He said He saved the publican, “forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham.” (Luke 19:9). Most Christians do not believe that Christ meant what He said in Matthew 15:24: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Surely the risen Lord led the apostle Paul to confirm this truth in Romans 15:8 and Galatians 4:4, as well as in Acts 13:23 which we have mentioned. In Romans 15:8 we read these words of Paul, “Jesus Christ was a Minister of the circumcision (the Jews) for the truth of God to confirm promises unto the fathers.” Now note the words of Galatians 4:4 and 5, “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.” Who was under the law? Israel.
Perhaps, we should not say that the majority of Christians do not want to believe Matthew 15:24, but they prefer to believe John 3:16, “for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” They find it very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile Matthew 15:24 with John 3:16. This is mentioned elsewhere in this message.
CHRIST RAISED UP IN RESURRECTION TO BE ISRAEL’S SAVIOUR
If Christians have difficulty in reconciling Matthew 15:24 with John 3:16, we are not surprised that they have more difficulty with the statement in Acts 5:31 and 32, that Christ was raised from the dead to be Israel’s Prince and Saviour to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. The first mission and work of the Holy Spirit was to witness to this all-important truth.
Let us note Christ’s words in Matthew 21:42, quoted from Psalm 118:19 to 24: “Jesus saith unto them, did ye never read in the Scriptures, the Stone Which the builders rejected, the Same is become the Head of the corner? This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” Surely when we read in I Peter 1:18 to 23 that we are redeemed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus, Who was, by God, foreordained to be the spotless Lamb, we know that the rejection, the death, the resurrection and the ascension of the sinless Christ was the “Lord’s doing.” And surely all of this is marvelous in our eyes. Surely the day that Christ, the Creator of all things, cried on the cross “Finished,” is the day in which sinners should rejoice and acknowledge that it is the day which the Lord made .
. . . . But what made Paul break forth with Romans 11:33 and 34, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past-tracing-out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? and who hath been His counsellor?” The apostle Paul uttered these words after he quoted, in Romans 11:7 to 10, what is quoted in John 12:39 to 41, concerning the fulfillment of Isaiah 6:9 and 10; the truth that God blinded Israel. In Matthew 21:42 we have recorded the words of the Lord Jesus, stating that ‘blinded’ Israel’s rejection of Jesus as their Messiah, in incarnation, was the Lord’s doing. What Paul said in Romans 11:33 and 34, was to let us know that blinded Israel’s rejection of Jesus their Messiah, in resurrection, was likewise the Lord’s doing. (Ephesians 1:11).
Do we really believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient? Do we believe Ephesians 1:11, that God worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, and that members of the Body of Christ have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of God? We learned in I Peter 1:18 to 23 that the Lord Jesus, from before the foundation (overthrow) of the world was foreordained to be the Lamb of God to shed His precious blood that by that blood believing sinners should be redeemed. Now let us note something else that God purposed in Christ from before the foundation (overthrow) of the world, His eternal purpose concerning the Church, Which is the Body of Christ, “according as He hath chosen us in Him (Christ) before the foundation (overthrow) of the world . . . having predestinated us unto the adoption of children (sons) by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will.” As we read this wonderful, profound truth in Ephesians 1:4 and 5, we should know that this was the eternal purpose of God which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ephesians 3:11).
We read in II Timothy 1:9 and 10, “God hath saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life an immortality (incorruptibility) to light through the gospel.” (II Timothy 1:9 and 10).
SALVATION . . . RECONCILIATION . . . DIVINE MERCY FOR GENTILES
After the apostle Paul informed Israel that Christ had been raised from the dead to give to Israel “the sure mercies of David” (Acts 13:33 to 37), and how they could have forgiveness of sins and complete justification from all things through the crucified and risen Christ (Acts 13:38 and 39), Paul warned them not to do what the prophets had foretold, “behold, ye despisers and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.” (Acts 13:38 to 41). But Israel was filled with envy, they contradicted, opposed and blasphemed. They were setting the stage for the crisis of the eleventh chapter of Romans. It is interesting and informative to compare Paul’s words to Israel, in Acts 13:46, with all the truth recorded in the eleventh chapter of Romans. Note Acts 13:46: “It was necessary that the Word of God should ‘FIRST’ have been spoken to you (Israel); but seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, Lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”
With Acts 13:46 think of Romans 11:7 to 10, that God blinded Israel. Think here of John 12:37 to 41. According to Romans 11:11, when and because of the ‘FALL’ of Israel, God sent salvation unto the Gentiles. In Romans 11:30 we read that, because of Israel’s unbelief, Divine mercy was extended to Gentiles. In Romans 11:15 we learn that when and because Israel was cast away, reconciliation was sent to the world. In Romans 11:12 we learn that because of the ‘FALL’ of Israel, God offered ‘riches’ to the Gentiles. So repeat with Paul Romans 11:33 and 34.
FOR THIS CAUSE CAME I UNTO THIS HOUR
Let us again read the words of Christ, in John 12:27, “for this cause came I unto this ‘HOUR’,” and His words, in John 3:14, “the Son of man ‘MUST’ be lifted up.” We know that the vicarious death of the Lord of Glory was neither premature nor accidental. Standing before the human Judge, Pontius Pilate, before whom we are told, in I Timothy 6:13, Christ witnessed a good confession, the Lord Jesus said to Pilate, “thou couldest have no power against Me, except it were given thee from above.” (John 19:11). The eternal, Divine, omnipotent Christ was not the helpless victim of circumstances in the hour of His death, which took place not one hour before God’s appointed time or one hour thereafter.
Note the charge of the religious rulers against Christ when they urged Pilate to put Him to death: “we have a law, and by our law He ought to die because He made Himself the Son of God.” (John 19:7). This question presents itself to any intelligent, thinking person who has examined the Bible Record: “if Jesus of Nazareth was not God, the Son, should He of have been put to death in accordance with the law which God gave to Israel, as recorded in Leviticus 24:16?” Hear Leviticus 24:16; “he that blasphemeth the Name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all of the congregation shall surely stone him.” Israel tried in vain several times to stone the Lord Jesus to death. In John 10:28 to 33 they declared they were doing this because of Christ’s blasphemous claim that He was equal with God.
Pilate knew that Jesus of Nazareth had not broken the laws of Rome and Caesar, for ‘blasphemy’ was not forbidden by the Roman law unless it was rebellion against Caesar. Christ had instructed His own nation to render to Caesar things that were Caesar’s. (Matthew 22:21). Therefore, said Pilate unto Israel’s rulers; “take Him (Jesus) and judge Him according to your law.” . . . “The Jews therefore said unto Pilate, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” (John 18:31). With these words Israel tried to escape the responsibility for the awful crime of the death of the Son of God. But the Holy Spirit directed the Lord’s servant to say that by Israel’s wicked hands Christ was slain. Acts 2:22 . . . Acts 3.29 and 30. “Pilate was determined to let Him go . . . Ye killed the Prince of Life.” (Acts 3:12 to 15).
THE HOUR IS COME
It is most interesting, and it should prove informative, to compare Christ’s statement to His mother in John 2:4, “Mine ‘HOUR’ is not yet come,” with His statement in Matthew 26:18, “My ‘TIME’ is at hand.” Christ’s statement concerning His ‘HOUR’ to His mother followed the question He asked her, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” Think prayerfully of this question. Then turn to John 19:26 and 27 and read what the suffering Christ on the cross said to John, the apostle, and to His mother: “Woman, behold Thy son!” . . . “To the disciple, Behold thy mother.” When the Saviour called Mary ‘woman’, in John 2:4, His ‘HOUR’ had not yet come. When He said, “Woman, behold thy son!”, His ‘HOUR’ had come.
Read again, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” and the statement, “Mine ‘HOUR’ is not yet come,” and you will see that Christ did not call Mary, “mother,” but “woman.” Mary had to come to Christ in His ‘HOUR’ on the cross to be saved. Then note that after Acts 1:13 and 14, right after Christ’s ascension, Mary is never again mentioned in the Bible.
Now read John 7:30 . . . “Then they sought to take Him (Jesus): but no man laid hands on Him, because His ‘HOUR’ was not yet come.” Why did they not lay hands on Christ? Because His ‘HOUR’ was not yet come. Again in John 8:20: “No man laid hands on Him: for His ‘HOUR’ was not yet come.” His ‘HOUR’ did not come, and could not come, until He truthfully said; “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” (John 17:4). When that work was finished the Lord Jesus said, “The ‘HOUR’ is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.” (John 12:23). “Jesus knew that His ‘HOUR’ was come that He should depart out of this world.” (John 13:1).
It seems that the Lord Jesus was tempted to ask deliverance from the agony of Gethsemane and Calvary when He asked, “shall I say, Father save Me from this ‘HOUR’?” (John 12:27). He answered His question by saying, “For this cause came I unto this ‘HOUR’.” (John 12:27). So in His prayer to His Father, the Son, Who was obedient unto the death of the cross, said, “Father, the ‘HOUR’ is come.” (John 17:1).
In John 10:31 we read that the Jews took up stones to stone Him (Jesus). In John 5:18 we read that the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He made Himself equal with God. In Luke 4:28 to 30 we read that they sought to kill Him.
In Acts 7:57 to 60 we read that the Jews did stone Stephen to death. In Acts 14:19 we read that Paul was stoned . . . “having stoned Paul, drew him out of city, supposing he had been dead.” In II Corinthians 11:25 Paul wrote of this stoning. By reading Exodus 19:13, Leviticus 20:2 and 27, Exodus 24:16, 14 and 23, Numbers 15:36, Deuteronomy 17:5, Deuteronomy 22:21 and 24 and Joshua 7:25, we learn why Israel was supposed to use stones in putting to death a law-breaker. They considered Christ worse than a law-breaker. By God’s decree He was numbered with the transgressors
In Luke 13:34 and 35 and in Matthew 21:35 the Lord Jesus accused Israel of stoning His faithful prophets. Of course, if they had had their way, they would have done to Christ what they did to Stephen. But note the words of Israel spoken to Pilate, after they had unsuccessfully attempted several times to stone Christ to death: “it is not lawful for us to put any man to death: That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which He spake, signifying what death He should die.” (John 18:31 and 32).
CHRIST ON THE CROSS FULFILLING THE SCRIPTURES
When the Lord of Glory was crucified (I Corinthians 2:8), not only was the saying of Jesus in John 12:27 to 33 and John 3:14 fulfilled, but Psalm 22:1 to 18 was fulfilled. This Psalm begins with the very words Christ cried unto His Father when He was dying on the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Then note Psalm 22:16, “they pierced My hands and My feet.” When Saul of Tarsus was saved near Damascus there was a ‘pattern’ fulfillment (I Timothy 1:16) of Zechariah 12:10; “they shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for Him.” A future fulfillment of this is mentioned in Revelation 1:7: “Behold He cometh with the clouds: and every eye shall see Him, and they which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.”
In the last few minutes of Christ on the cross we read, in John 19:28: “Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled (Psalm 69:21), saith, I thirst.” Then note verses 34, 36 and 3 7: “one of the soldiers pierced His side . . . these things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled; “A bone of Him shall not be broken . . . And again another Scripture saith, They shall look on Him Whom they pierced.” From Christ’s birth of the virgin Mary in a borrowed bed in Bethlehem to His burial in a borrowed sepulchre (the tomb of Joseph), the events in the birth, life, rejection, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus were “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.” Christ said, in Matthew 26:24, “The Son of man goeth, as it is written of Him.” In Romans 11:25 and 26 we read that He will return for Israel’s redemption, “as it is written.” So concerning the first advent of the Lord Jesus and the truth that His own (Israel) received Him not, we read in Acts 13:29: and 30: “when they had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulchre . . . But God raised Him from the dead.”
Hear the record concerning Israel, in John 12:37 and 38: “Though He (Christ) had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on Him; that the saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, Lord, who hath believed our report?” How sad to know that today, after more than 1900 years the majority of the members of so-called Christian churches do not believe the full report concerning the eternal, omnipotent, Divine, sinless Christ, Who appeared once in the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. (Hebrews 9:26). The risen Lord is still saying, “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” (Luke 24:25). There are many religious church-members who give mental assent to some of the glorious truths concerning the Lord Jesus, while they seem to be apathetically indifferent as to genuine ‘soul’ devotion and in the matter of an intelligent, spiritual testimony concerning His eternal Deity. Many church-members are suffering with dead orthodoxy. They claim to be evangelical in their heads, but are anything but evangelistic. Remember the words of the Son of God, in John 12:26, “if any man serve Me, him will My Father honour.”
MY FATHER WORKETH HITHERTO AND I WORK
In John 5:18 we read that the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because He healed the impotent man on their Sabbath and because He said, “My Father worketh hitherto: and I work.” (John 5:17). They understood from this statement that the Lord Jesus made Himself equal with God. (John 5:18). Again they sought to stone Him when He said, in John 10:30, “I and Father are ONE.” The Lord Jesus said to Philip, His apostle, “he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” (John 14:9).
In speaking to and concerning His Father, in John’s Record, the Lord Jesus called Him ‘FATHER’ about ten times, ‘THE FATHER’, about 70 times, and ‘MY FATHER’ about 38 times. In John’s Record God, the Father is mentioned 122 times. No other Book in the New Testament Scriptures mentions the ‘FATHER’ even half this number; in fact God is mentioned as ‘FATHER’ a greater number of times in John’s Record than in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and in all of Paul’s Epistles combined. “FATHER” is in John’s five Books 144 times. We have already observed that God, the Son, is called ‘JESUS’ more than 250 times in John which is far more than in any other Book in the Bible. It is interesting to note that God is called ‘FATHER’, 269 times in Books from Matthew to Revelation.
At Sinai the Lord God gave man some work which He was never able to do. (Acts 15:10). The people had said to Moses, “All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do.” (Exodus 19:8). A short while after this pledge the same people said to Moses, after God had given him the ten commandments, “speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” (Exodus 20:19). About 1500 years later Christ said to the same nation, “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?” (John 7:19). But in rejecting their Messiah, by Whom came grace and truth, they said, “we are Moses’s disciples.” (John 9:28). “Being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” (Romans 10:3). They made the fatal blunder mentioned in Romans 9:32, “they sought not righteousness by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law . . . For they stumbled at that stumblingstone.” (Romans 9:32).
In this year 1954 A.D. how many church-members even endeavour to understand Romans 4:4? How few of them receive and believe this truth of God: “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt?”
“But to him that worketh not but believeth in Him that justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness.” (Romans 4:4 and 5). In Romans 10:4 we read that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. As to how this was accomplished, we are told in II Corinthians 5:21, that the Lord Jesus, Who knew no sin, was made sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus Christ, the Righteous (I John 2:1), became our Sinbearer, bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. (I Peter 2:24).
Long before God “sabbathed” on the seventh day, after six days of creation, “resting from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:1 and 2), He and His Son, Who before the foundation of the world was in the form of God, entered into an agreement that that Son was to come to this earth as the spotless Lamb of God to bear away the sins of the world. (I Peter 1:18 to 23). When God’s sabbath was ended at the time sin entered, by Adam, into the world (Romans 5:12), God promised that His Son would come as the Seed of the woman (Genesis 3:14 and 15). Later on the obedient Son of the Father said, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” (Hebrews 10:7). The whole creation was travailing in pain. (Romans 8:22). The whole world was lying in the Wicked One. (I John 5:19). God was working. Satan was working. The children of Adam were being conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. At the time of the flood “God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5).
Again after the flood the human race decided to give up God; and God gave them up. (Romans 1:21 to 32). Out of the wreck and ruin of humanity God established one Nation on the earth. Through this Nation (Israel) God continued to work. Within a few centuries God said to that people, “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity . . . they have forsaken the Lord.”. . .”The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but ISRAEL doth not know, my people doth not consider.” (Isaiah 1:1 to 4). Then this appraisal of God’s chosen nation (chosen to be His peculiar nation) is recorded in the verses that follow: “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness, but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores . . . (Isaiah 1:5 and 6).
This was God’s holy Nation, through whom He was to do His work for the rest of the human race. This was the Nation, who said at Sinai, “all that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” (Exodus 19:8). God gave them a perfect work to do, the ten commandments. With that perfect work God included a Sabbath. God rested in His perfect work of creation. In Hebrews 10:10 to 14 we learn that Christ rested in a perfect work of redemption. To accomplish that perfect work of redemption, the Author (Causer) of eternal salvation, made perfect through the things which He suffered (Hebrews 5:8 and 9), had to become the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief, had to be despised and rejected by His own chosen nation and forsaken by His own Father, crying on the cross, “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). In Gethsemane the Lord of glory sweat as it were great drops of blood. He was very heavy and said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.” (Mark 14:34). As He contemplated Calvary He prayed to His Father, “take away this cup from Me: nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” (Mark 14:36). All of this was included in the Father’s will concerning His Son’s work for a condemned human race. That Son, Who was obedient unto death (Philippians 2:5 to 11), said “I came down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” (John 6:38).
As we seriously consider Him Who suffered such contradiction of sinners, bleeding in Gethsemane and on the cross ( Hebrews 12:1 to 5), we should know the truth of Romans 3:19 and Galatians 2:21: “what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God”. “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ has died in vain (for nought).” With these statements we should read Romans 4:15 and Colossians 1:20; that the law worketh wrath, but that Christ made peace through the blood of His cross.
So we read in Romans 8:3, “what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” The result: believing sinners freed from the law of sin and death; then the righteousness of the law could be fulfilled in believers who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1 to 4).
FULFILLING THE LAW AND RIGHTEOUSNESS
When Jesus came to John the Baptist to be baptized, John forbade. “And Jesus answering said unto him (John): suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” (Matthew 3:13 to 15). In Matthew 5:17 these words were spoken by the Lord Jesus: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”
In Luke 12:50 we learn that when the Lord Jesus was thinking of the agony of Calvary He said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.” This ‘death’ baptism of God’s Son was part of the work which He had to finish. It was the principal part; for in the shadow of the cross He said, “For this cause came I unto this hour.” (John 12:27). Christ testified that He must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness (John 3:14), “signifying what death He should die.” (John 12:33). Christ’s death on the cross was His ‘baptism’. (Luke 12:50). Christ called the death of James, the brother of John, by Herod’s sword, James’ ‘baptism’. (Matthew 20:20 to 24 . . . Acts 12:1 and 2). Later on Peter received his ‘martyr’ baptism. (John 21:18 and II Peter 1:14). John was told that he would receive his ‘martyr’ baptism. (Matthew 20:23). James and Peter and John did not fulfill all righteousness when they received their ‘death’ baptism. They did become righteous when they were baptized by the Holy Spirit into the death of Christ.
NEVER MAN SPAKE LIKE THIS MAN
In John 7:44 to 48 we learn that the religious enemies of Christ were sorely displeased because Jesus, the Messiah, had not been apprehended. It is recorded in these verses: “some of them would have taken Him: but no man laid hands on Him.” “The chief priests and the Pharisees said unto them, Why have ye not brought Him?” “The officers answered, “Never man spake like this Man.” (John 7:46).
If you will carefully and prayerfully read, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, about 50 times that the Lord Jesus said, “verily, I say unto you,” and follow through with what He said, you too will join with those who said, “they were astonished at His doctrine; for he taught them as ONE having ‘AUTHORITY’, and not as the scribes.” (Matthew 7:29). Then the religious rulers challenged His authority when He said unto the palsied victim, “thy sins be forgiven thee.” He proved His authority by saying, “that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, He saith to the sick of the palsy, take up thy bed . . . and immediately he arose.” (Mark 2:5 to 12). A little later when the great storm at sea filled the boat of His disciples and they were sore afraid, Christ arose and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace; be still” . . . “the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.” (Mark 4:36 to 39). Compare ‘great storm’ and ‘great calm’ and then say with those who saw the great miracle, “what manner of Man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” (Mark 4:41).
Then note a very sudden great change in Luke 4:22 to 29, First, they ‘‘wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth” . . . Second, the religious rulers were filled with indignation and tried their utmost to kill Jesus. He escaped their murderous attack and reached Capernaum where His hearers were again “astonished at His doctrine; for His word was with power.” (Luke 4:31 and 32).
If you will carefully study the words of the Lord Jesus, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, in the verses where He said, “verily, I say unto you,” you will say, “never man spake like this Man.” (John 6:47).
After you halve finished this assignment then note that, in John’s Record, we read more than 100 times these words, “Jesus saith” . . . “Jesus said” . . . “Jesus answered.” About 30 times it is recorded in John, “He saith” . . . “He said,” the ‘HE’ referring to Jesus. Then as we find, in John’s Record, that of the 28 times the Lord Jesus said, “I say” or “I said,” it is most interesting and significant to note that 25 times He emphasized the truth and authority, with which He spake, by using the double ‘Verily’ . . . “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” “Verily” is the Greek word elsewhere translated ‘Amen’.
In John 7:43 we read concerning Christ: “there was a division among the people because of Him.” Yes, “there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him: for some said, He is a GOOD MAN: others said, Nay, but He deceiveth the people.” (John 7:12). The division and murmuring are still going on. However, if people are deceived concerning Christ, it is not Christ who has deceived them, but His great enemy, Satan, who hates Christ with a vicious hatred. If Christ said He had glory with the Father before the world was, that He had power on earth to forgive sins, if He claimed unity and equality with God, if He permitted His disciple to worship Him as ‘my Lord and My God’ (John 20:28 ), He was either God, or He deceived the people. If Christ deceived the people, He was not a ‘GOOD MAN’. Christ was both ‘GOOD’ and ‘GOD’, or He was neither ‘GOOD’ nor ‘GOD’. Only the ‘GOD-MAN’ could say, “I have power to lay, down My life; and have power to take it up again”; and do it. (John 10:17 to 19). Only the ‘GOD-MAN’ could truthfully say, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” (John 8:58). He also said, “If ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins.” (John 8:24). Read each one of Christ’s more than twenty “I AM’S” in John’s Record, and you will agree with the Jews of His time who said, “Never man spake like This MAN.” (John 7:46). Christ claimed to be the one and only way to God and eternal life and heaven. (John 14:6 . . . 11:25 and 26 . . . 14:3). In the wonderful prayer of the High Priest, recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, we read Christ’s words in verse 24, “I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am: that they may behold My glory.” With this prayer read Christ’s statement in another prayer to His Father, in John 11:42, “I knowest that Thou hearest Me ‘ALWAYS’.”
As we read these prayers of the Lord Jesus, we think of Colossians 3:4, “When Christ, Who is our LIFE, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.”
The Father spoke from heaven concerning His Son, saying, “This is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him.” (Matthew 17:5). This is the Son Who said, “the dead shall hear the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” (John 5:25). This is the Son Who said, referring to His bodily resurrection: “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19). “Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John 1:51).
With the more than twenty “I AM’s” in the twenty-one chapters of John it is interesting to visit John on the Isle of Patmos in the first few chapters of “The Revelation” and learn, in the closing verses of the fourth chapter, that everything was created by the Lord Jesus and for His pleasure. After seeing Him as the great Creator in the fourth chapter, then see Him in the closing verses of the fifth chapter as the Great Redeemer: “for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.” (Revelation 5:9). Little wonder then that the resurrected Christ said to John: “I AM Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, Which is, and Which was, and Which is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:11). This testimony of Christ includes all the “I AM’s” of John’s Record. Note His “I AM” in John 11:25 and 26 and compare with His “I AM” of Revelation 1:18: “I AM the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” “I AM He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I AM alive forever more, Amen: and have the keys of hades and of death.”
Now note John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Word became flesh that He should, by the grace of God, taste death for every man (Hebrews 2:9); that He might, through death, destroy him who had the power of death, the devil. (Hebrews 2:14 and 15). The Lord of Glory, in the shadow of the cross, said, “now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” (John 12:31). Then the Lord added that the Holy Spirit would reprove the world of judgment, “because the prince of this world is judged.” (John 16:11). In John 14:30 the Lord said, “the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.” In Matthew 12:24 Beelzebub is called “the prince of demons”; but for some reason, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Satan is not called the prince of the world. However Satan does claim to have authority over the kingdoms of this world in Luke 4:5 to 7. In John’s Gospel it is not recorded that Satan met Christ in the wilderness to tempt Him. This temptation is mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
In John 1:9 the Lord Jesus is called “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” We learn in John 3:19 and 20 and throughout John’s Record that Israel would not come to the Light, to Jesus, Who called Himself, “The Light of the World.” (John 1:12). We find ‘LIGHT’ in John 23 times.
In the twenty-one chapters of John the Lord Jesus, in referring to Himself, used the first person pronoun “I” and “ME” about 550 times; “MY”—”MINE”—”MYSELF,” about 110 times. Then adding the number of times He spoke of Himself in the third person pronoun and by various titles He referred to Himself well over 700 times.
Surely the eternal, Divine, self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient Christ spake as never man spake, testifying that He had glory with the Father before the world began (John 17:5); that He came down from heaven (John 6:38); that he always pleased His Father (John 8:29); that He had power to lay down His life and take it up again. (John 10:17 to 19). If you will carefully and prayerfully list all the sayings of Christ in John, you will join Thomas in, “my Lord and my God.” (John 20:28).
THE TRINITY IN JOHN’S RECORD
We read these interesting words in I John 2:1; “if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Here we learn that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Christian’s ‘ADVOCATE’ with the Father. There is more here than the implication, that those redeemed by the grace of God and faith in Christ, Who is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, need an Advocate with God, our Father in heaven. (I John 2:2). In Hebrews 7:25 we learn that the Father and the Son are able to save to the uttermost (all the way to end), believers who come unto the Father through the Son. Because the Son ever liveth to make intercession for them. In Hebrews 9:24 we learn that Christ has entered into heaven itself, there to appear in the presence of the Father for Christians. Prayerfully consider this wonderful, blessed truth.
The Lord Jesus on the cross appeared to put sin away by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26), there suffering for sin once, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God (I Peter 3:18), there making peace by the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20) and becoming the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. He by the grace of God tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9). Christ gave Himself a ransom for all (I Timothy 2:6). Every person should know that when we by faith in Christ meet God at Calvary we become the sons of God, a relationship which is established once for all. (Hebrews 10:10). As the Lord Jesus Christ, the Righteous, was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification (Romans 4:24 and 25) to establish our relationship, He has for more than 1900 years been the living Intercessor in the presence of God in heaven to maintain the believer’s fellowship. Only justified, redeemed people have an Advocate.
When we read in Hebrews 7:25, that, because of the ceaseless intercession of the Son of God in heaven, God is able to save believers ‘all the way to the end’, we think of Christ in John 13:1 and 17:24, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession (Hebrews 3:1); “having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end” . . . “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.” Inasmuch as no one is able to pluck believers out of the hand of the Son or the Father (John 10:28 and 29), Christ’s prayer will be answered. Believers will be saved all the way to the end. (Philippians 1:6 and Romans 8:38 and 39 . . . I Corinthians 11:32).
The Greek word translated ‘ADVOCATE’ in I John 2:1 is ‘PARAKLETOS’. ‘PARAKLETOS’ is from “PARAKALEO,” meaning ‘CALL NEAR’. So the believer has a Paraclete in heaven in the presence of the Father.
In John 14:16 and 26, John 15:26 and John 16:7 the Greek ‘PARAKLETOS’ is translated ‘COMFORTER’, referring to the Holy Spirit. Of course you and I would like to know why the word ‘PARAKLETOS’, referring to the Second Person of the Trinity, is translated ‘ADVOCATE’, and referring to the Third Person, the Holy Spirit, is translated ‘COMFORTER’. But we do know that they are both ‘INTERCESSORS’, as we learn in Hebrews 7:25 and Romans 8:26 and 27. We have already quoted the words of Hebrews 7:25. Now let us note prayerfully and carefully Romans 8:26 and 27: “The Spirit, also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: the Spirit Himself maketh intercessions for us (Christians) with groanings which cannot be uttered . . . He maketh intercession for the saints according to will of God.” When the Lord Jesus Christ, as the believer’s ‘PARACLETE’, was washing the feet of believers in the thirteenth chapter of John He was indeed a ‘PERSON’. So a ‘PARACLETE’ is a ‘PERSON’. This ‘PARACLETE’ promised that the Father would send ‘ANOTHER PARACLETE’. (John 14:16). Although God does not have a body of flesh, He is a ‘PERSON’. Although the HOLY SPIRIT does not have a body of flesh and blood He is a ‘PERSON’, “ANOTHER PARACLETE.” Each word, ‘another’ and ‘Parakletos’, proves that the Holy Spirit is a ‘PERSON’.
A believer who is born of God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:12 and 13 . . . Galatians 3:26), is at the same time born of the Holy Spirit (John 3:5) and baptized by the Holy Spirit into the BODY OF CHRIST. Every member of that BODY is sealed by the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption, the Holy Spirit being the earnest of that Body. member’s inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. (Ephesians 1:13 and 14 and 4:30) . . . (II Corinthians 1:22).
WHAT MEANETH, THE HOLY SPIRIT NOT YET GIVEN?
When the Lord Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of the world and go back to His Father in heaven (John 16:28) He said to His apostles: “it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the COMFORTER will not come unto you. But if I depart I will send Him unto you.” (John 16:7). This is in agreement with the statement recorded in John 7:39: “The Holy Spirit was not yet (given), because that Jesus was not yet glorified.”
In I Timothy 2:4, to 7 the Holy Spirit directed the apostle Paul to write that Christ Jesus is the ONE MEDIATOR between God and men, and on the cross He gave Himself a ransom for all. In Acts 4:12 the Holy Spirit Directed the apostle Peter to write that in no other name than the Name of Christ can any one be saved. Then the same Holy Spirit directed the same apostle Peter to write, in I Peter 3:18, that Christ suffered for sins once, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. So the Lord Jesus stated all of this in John 14:6 when He said “I am the WAY; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.”
Thus we see that the unsaved sinner must reach God through Christ on the cross; and that the sinning saint must reach God, the Father, through God the Son Who is in the Father’s presence in heaven, representing the believer. Christ’s statement is quite dogmatic and emphatic in John 6:44: “No man can come unto Me (the Son) except the Father Which hath sent Me draw Him: and I will raise Him up the last day.” How does the Son draw the believing sinner to His Father? Note the answer in John 16:7 to 11, the truth that the Holy Spirit will reprove the world of sin, because they believe not on Me. Then note II Thessalonians 2:13, “God, from the beginning, hath chosen us unto salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” Faith cometh by hearing the Word of God, the gospel of your salvation. (Romans 10:12 to 16 and Ephesians 1:13 and 14).
When the resurrected Christ met His apostles in a mountain He gave them what has been called ‘the great commission’, instructing them to do their work in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19 and 20). The wording in this commission and what we have quoted from the writings of the apostles John, Peter and Paul prove the Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit. This truth seems to be confirmed in Acts 13:2 . . . Acts 5:3 to 10, Revelation 22:17, Acts 16:7 and in other Scriptures. Matthew, Mark and Luke were not directed by the Holy Spirit to record the truths that John was directed to write concerning
THE TWO PARACLETES
In Matthew, Mark and Luke there is not a hint of the truth recorded in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of John’s Record, in which chapters we learn something of the ministry or work of the two Paracletes, the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. In chapter thirteen of John, after we read that the Lord Jesus loved His own in the world unto the end, which causes us to think of Philippians 1:6 and Hebrews 7:25, we understand something of the meaning of the words of the Saviour, recorded in John 13:10, “he that is washed (all over) needeth not save to wash His feet.” This causes us to think of I John 2:1 and 2, Christ the Propitiation for our sins by His work on the cross, by which believers are washed all over, once for all, and Christ, the believer’s Advocate (Paraclete), or foot-washer. Peter and the other apostles knew that their feet were being washed by the Lord Jesus; but He said to them: “what I do thou knowest not now: but thou shalt know hereafter.” (John 13:7). The Lord Jesus was here teaching His apostles that after His death, resurrection and ascension they would know that the washing of their feet foreshadowed His work as their foot-washing Advocate in the presence of God in heaven.
In the seventeenth chapter of John as we consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, interceding with His Father in behalf of those given to Him by His Father, we think of Hebrews 8:1 and 2: “we have such an High Priest, Who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a Minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle.” “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, the figures of the true, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us.” (Hebrews 9:24). This intercessory work of the great High Priest in God’s presence in behalf of Christians guarantees them ‘UTTERMOST’ salvation. (Hebrews 7:25). This means the answer to Christ’s petition in John 17:24 in behalf of His disciples, that they may be with Him and behold His glory. In Colossians 3:1 to 4 and Philippians 3:19 and 20 and I John 3:2 and Romans 8:18 we learn that Christians are going to share with the Lord Jesus His eternal Divine glory. In the ages to come. (Ephesians 2:7).
In between chapters thirteen and seventeen in John’s Record we have set forth something of the ministry and work of the other Paraclete, the Holy Spirit.
A DIVISION BECAUSE OF JESUS
In John 7:43 we read, “So there was a division among the people because of Him (Jesus).” “There was much murmuring among the people concerning Him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, nay, but He deceiveth the people.” (John 7:12). “Others said, this is the Christ.” (John 7:41). A man, who is really a good man, surely would not deceive the people. The Lord Jesus said to His own nation: “I am come in My Father’s Name, and ye receive Me not: if another shall come in His own name, him ye will receive.” (John 5:43). The antichrist is coming with all power and signs and lying wonders, after the working of Satan. (II Thessalonians 2:9). He will be received. Christ was despised and rejected. “His own received Him not.”
The Lord Jesus said, “I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” (John 6:38). He said, “before Abraham was, I AM.” (John 8:58). The Lord Jesus said that He had glory with the Father before the world was. (John 17:5). We read in John 1:18 and John 3:13: “no man hath seen God at any time: the only Begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” . . . “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven; the Son of Man Who is in heaven.” The Son said, “he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” (John 14:9). Very many times in John’s Record the Son of God refers to Him self by noun and pronoun. He calls Himself the “I AM” about twenty times in John, saying in John 8:24, “if ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins.” Is it any wonder that believers and unbelievers agreed concerning Christ, “never man spake like this Man?” (John 7:46). Others asked a very interesting question, “when Christ (Messiah) cometh, will He do more miracles than these which this Man hath done?” (John 7:31).
This question in John 7:31 is very interesting. It was not asked by disciples, but by Israelites who were partly confused and partly convinced. Israel’s rulers did not believe Moses. Today the religious world, even Christendom, is confused. Israel knew that any Jew, who claimed to be orthodox, who claimed to believe Moses and the other prophets, including Daniel, should have believed that a personal, Divine Messiah was coming from heaven to earth, and that according to Isaiah 35:3 to 6 and Isaiah 7:14 and Isaiah 9:6 and 7, He would be both the Son of God and God. He would prove that He was the God of Isaiah 35:3 by performing the miracles of Isaiah 35:4 and 5. The Lord Jesus performed all of these miracles, and many more. The Saviour, in John 5:36, testified that the miraculous works which He was doing were His credentials, witnessing that the Father had sent Him. Hear another testimony of the Son of God: “believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; or else believe Me for the very works’ sake.” (John 14:11).
According to the words of the Lord Jesus in John 5:45 to 47, the Israelites, who claimed to believe Moses, were not honest and sincere. They did not believe Moses. The apostle Paul told Israel the truth, in Acts 13:27, saying that the Jews in Jerusalem, including their rulers, had fulfilled the Old Testament Scriptures, which were read in the synagogue every Sabbath, by condemning their Messiah Who had come to them in fulfillment of those Scriptures. Because the rulers of this world knew not, they crucified the Lord of glory. (I Corinthians 2:8). When they had fulfilled all that was written of Him they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulchre: But God raised Him from the dead. (Acts 13:39 and 30).
A GOOD MAN OR A DECEIVER
We read in John 12:37 and 38 the quotation from Isaiah 53:1, “who hath believed our report?” The answer is, “that though He (Jesus) had done so many miracles before them (Israel), yet they believed not on Him.” There are millions of so-called Christian church-members today who do not believe the report concerning the eternal, Divine, omnipotent, omniscient, sinless Christ of John’s Gospel. They would not call Jesus a ‘deceiver’. Even many rabbis would agree with these unsaved, religious church-members that Jesus Christ was a ‘Good Man’. How do they know He was a ‘Good Man?’ Is John’s biography of the Lord Jesus trustworthy? Can we give an intelligent answer to the question, “what think ye of Christ,” by depending on what Christ says about Himself in John’s Gospel?
If we are to base our intelligent appraisal of Christ on John’s Record, we must decide that Jesus Christ was both “GOD” and “GOOD,” or He was neither “GOD” nor “GOOD.” Christ was either GOD in human form, or He deceived the people. Peter, John and Paul all believed that Jesus Christ was the eternal God in human form. When Peter said to the Saviour, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), “Jesus answered and said unto Him, flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17). It is true that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (I Corinthians 2:14).
When unsaved church-members repudiate the clear statements concerning the eternal Deity and virgin birth of the self-existent Christ, it is because no man can say that Jesus is the Lord except by the Holy Spirit, Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. (I Corinthians 12:3 and John 14:17). It is so strange that many religious church-members desire to bear the Name of Christ (Christian), and yet they do not know that a “Christian-infidel” is an impossible paradox. Of course when we read of the clever devil’s work in II Corinthians 11:13 to 15, perhaps we should not be surprised. Satan transforms himself into an angel of light and camouflages his ministers of righteousness who minister as servants of Christ. Many of these unsaved, religious church members are called “modernists.” Every modernist, who pretends to be a Christian, is either an infidel or an idolater. If he does not honour the Son as he honours the Father (John 5:23), if he does not worship Him, as He was worshipped by angels and men (Hebrews 1:6 to 8 and John 20:28), “my Lord and my God,” he is an infidel. If he really worships Christ Whom he calls a good man, the son of Joseph, not the eternal Son of God, he is an idolater.
THE DIVISION CHRIST FORETOLD IN LUKE 12:51
In Luke 12:50 the Lord Jesus explained that He was going to the cross for His “death” baptism, and not to David’s throne to reign over the house of Israel. (Luke 1:27 to 33). Peace on earth would be postponed. (Luke 2:14). Instead of peace on earth note Christ’s question and answer in Luke 12:51 to 53: “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay, but rather division: for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.” The question may come to your mind; “how can we reconcile this with Acts 16:31, “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, ‘and thy house’?” It seems, as we read Acts 16:15, that all of Lydia’s household were saved when she was. But today all about us we see the unhappy division to which Christ referred in Luke 12:51 to 53. Christ has indeed divided families and friends.
In Matthew 25:31 to 46 we learn that bye and bye the Lord Jesus, as King and judge here on earth, is going to do some dividing. “Before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divided His sheep from the goats.” (Matthew 25:32).
In Luke 16:19 to 31 we read of a great gulf fixed between the poor man in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man in hell: “so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.”
TWO MEN AND THE LAMB OF GOD
There was something between the penitent and the impenitent thief on the cross. There was something between Cain and Abel. There was something between the two men who went up to the temple to pray. (Luke 18:10 to 14). The very same thing will be between the unbelievers in eternal conscious perdition and the believers in eternal conscious glory. Between the two thieves was the LAMB of GOD Who beareth away the sin of the world. The blood of the lamb was between Cain and Abel. The blood-sprinkled mercyseat was between the two men who went up in the temple to pray. (Luke 18:10 to 14).
As we compare the last verses of the twentieth chapter of “The Revelation” with John 3:17 to 19 and Romans 5:20 and Romans 2:2 to 11 and Revelation 21:8, we learn that sinners are going to eternal conscious perdition because of their sins, and also because they refuse God’s all-sufficient remedy for sins. In John 8:24 we read these words of Christ; “if ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins.” Think this over; what does it mean to die in your sins? What is the meaning of Proverbs 29:1: “he that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy?” We might ask also what is the meaning of Hebrews 10:39: “we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe unto the saving of the soul?”
Inasmuch as the vilest sinner on earth can be saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, His vicarious death and bodily resurrection, and not only have all of his sins forgiven and forever put away, but stand completely justified in God’s sight (Acts 13:38 and 39 . . . Romans 3:24 to 28), we can say the Bible teaches that, in the final analysis, sinners go to perdition because they refuse to receive Christ, fail to appropriate God’s all sufficient perfect remedy for sin and sins. The Lord Jesus suffered for sins once, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. (I Peter 3:18). “Having forgiven you “all your sins.” (Colossians 2:13). “Justified from all things.” (Acts 13:39). We read in Colossians 2:9 and 10, In the Lord Jesus dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. “Ye are full in Him.”
THE DIVISION OF GOD’S PEOPLE WHICH DISPLEASES GOD
In the great prayer of the Apostle and High Priest of our confession in John 17:1 to 25, we read in John 17:9 that He is praying not for the world, but for believers. “That they all may be ‘ONE’ . . . that they may be ‘ONE’ in us . . . that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” (John 17:21). “That they maybe ‘ONE’, even as we are ‘ONE’.” (John 17:22). “That they maybe made perfect in ‘ONE’.” (John 17:23). Some years later the risen Lord directed Paul to write: “ye are all ‘ONE’ in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28). Again in Romans 12:5: “so we, being many, are ‘ONE’ BODY in Christ, and every ONE members ‘ONE’ of another.” Again I Corinthians 12:12 and 13: “for as the body is ‘ONE’, and hath many members, and all the members of that ‘ONE’ body, being many, are ‘ONE’ body: so also is ‘THE CHRIST’ . . . For by ‘ONE’ Spirit have we all been baptized into ‘ONE BODY.” God raised Christ from the dead, and raised Him far above all heavens (Ephesians 4:10), “and gave Him to be Head over all things to the CHURCH, Which is His BODY, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22 and 23). “There is ‘ONE’ BODY.” (Ephesians 4:4). “There should be no ‘DIVISION’ in the BODY.” (I Corinthians 12:25).
“That there be no ‘DIVISIONS’ among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together.” (I Corinthians 1:10). “Is Christ DIVIDED?” (I Corinthians 1:13). There is ‘ONE’ Lord . . . ‘ONE’ faith . . . ‘ONE’ baptism.” (Ephesians 4:5). “Endeavouring to keep the ‘ONENESS’ of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:3). Concerning the CHURCH, Which is the ‘ONE’ BODY, called in Ephesians 3:6, “JOINT-BODY”, a “BUILDING” and a “HOLY TEMPLE” in Ephesians 2:21, we read; “In Christ all the ‘BUILDING’ fitly joined together groweth unto a ‘HOLY TEMPLE’ in the Lord, in Whom ye are builded together.” (Ephesians 2:21 and 22).
In spite of the unholy, disgraceful divisions and sub-divisions and more than 300 sectarian church-organizations, God has His ‘ONE’ BODY, not a religious organization but a spiritual ORGANISM, the “JOINT-BODY” (not “same” BODY). “The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal: the Lord knoweth them that are His.” (II Timothy 2:19). There are no unsaved people in the BODY of Christ. God only knows how many unsaved people are members of so-called Christian church-organizations. The Lord Jesus and the CHURCH are ‘ONE’ flesh (Ephesians 5:31 and 32). God is making ‘ONE’ New Man of believers who are reconciled to Him in ‘ONE’ BODY by the cross.” (Ephesians 2:15 and 16). The Lord Jesus will present the CHURCH to Himself, glorious, blameless, holy and spotless. (Ephesians 5:25 to 27).
In this age and dispensation of grace the very moment the believing sinner meets God at Calvary, receiving Christ and believing that He was delivered for our offences and raised for our justification, that believing sinner, without ritual or any religious ceremonies, immediately is made a ‘CHURCH-MEMBER’ by the grace and power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Becoming identified with the local assembly is not called, in the Bible, ‘Joining the Church’. The believer’s eternal security is ‘IN CHRIST’. (Romans 8:1 . . . Ephesians 2:13 . . . II Corinthians 5:17 . . . Ephesians 1:6 and 7 . . . 1:4 and 5 Colossians 2:10). God will yet gather together in ‘ONE’ all things ‘IN CHRIST’. (Ephesians 1:10).
So think again of the words the Lord gave Caiaphas, the high priest, to say in John 11:51 and 52: “he prophesied that Jesus would die for Israel, and not for that nation only, but also that He should gather together in ‘ONE’ the children of God that were scattered abroad.”
The Gospel of John The Book of Life
When we call “The Gospel of John,” “The Book of Life,” we are not referring to “The Book of Life” mentioned in Revelation 20:14 and 15: “And death and hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in ‘the book of life’ was cast into the lake of fire.” In these verses we have a very short but Scriptural definition of the “second death.”
In I John 1:2 and I John 5:20 we have the definition of eternal life: “The Life was manifest, and we have seen, and bear witness, and show unto you that ‘Eternal Life’, Which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” . . . “We are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and ‘Eternal Life’.” Now note I John 5:11 and 12: “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life: he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” We read in John 1:4, concerning Christ, “in Him was life.” Then these words of Christ, in John 5:21; “the Son giveth life to whom He will.” Another short and Scriptural definition of “Eternal Life” is found in the words of Christ, in His prayer to His Father, recorded in John 17:3, “this is ‘Life Eternal’ that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent.”
The Lord Jesus testified, according to John 10:10: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Christ testified in John 14:6, “I am the LIFE.” Again hear His words in John 11:25 and 26: “I am the resurrection and the ‘LIFE’; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live . . . and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” Again these words of Christ, in John 6:51: “I am the ‘living’ bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this Bread, he shall live forever.”
The apostle Paul testified: “for me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21). Paul said, “Christ liveth in me.” (Galatians 2:20) . . . “When Christ, who is our ‘LIFE’ shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” (Colossians 3:3 and 4). In this same Epistle to the Colossians Paul wrote to saints: “you hath He made alive together with Him (Christ), having forgiven you all trespasses.” (Colossians 2:13).
In Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians he addresses the believers as ‘saints’, and adds “to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” In Ephesians 5:3 and 4 these saints are instructed how to walk and behave “as becometh saints.” So in this Epistle, as in other Epistles of Paul and Peter, we are told how “to become saints” and how to behave as “becometh saints.” God has much service for saints to do, so many good works for saints to perform, instructing us, in Ephesians 2:10, that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. But in God’s ‘grace’ message the Holy Spirit has so clearly stated the all-important truth that no dead sinner becomes a living saint by behaving or walking or working. No matter how religious a dead sinner may be, God wants none of his good works or religious doings until he is made alive by God’s grace and power, until he is the recipient of God’s saving grace through faith in the perfect redemptive work of the perfect Christ. (Ephesians 2:8 and 9 . . . Titus 3:5 to 8).
In this message we are writing concerning John’s Record, you have undoubtedly observed that we have shown and will continue to show that the truth in John is not so much like the truth in Matthew as it is like the ‘grace’ message which the Lord revealed to and through the apostle Paul.
In Ephesians 2:1 to 6 we learn that the sinner is by nature the child of wrath, dead in sins, that by faith he is made alive by God and is raised up and made to sit down in the heavenlies in Christ. In Ephesians 1:4 and 5 we learn that the dead sinners, who become living saints, were chosen by the Father and the Son. Then as we study Ephesians from 2:10 on through the Epistle we learn that the Father wants His redeemed children to walk worthy of the calling wherewith they are called, to be established in His Truth, and know that they are called to separation and service. Also He wants them to know that they are joined to the risen Christ in an inseparable and eternal union, and all joined by the Holy Spirit to one another as members of Christ’s ‘JOINT-BODY’ (not ‘same’ Body . . . Ephesians 3:6). With this truth in Ephesians let us read John 6:29, John 5:24 and John 15:16: “This is the work of God that ye believe in Him Whom He hath sent.” “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My Word, and believeth Him that sent Me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed out of death into life.” “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” This last statement is in connection with Christ’s teaching concerning “The Vine and The Branches,” the truth that Christ was the Vine and those who received Him as Saviour were the branches abiding in Him. The branches were to bear much fruit (John 15:8), and prove to the world that they were branches by loving one another. (John 15:12). According to John 17:21 to 23 the Lord Jesus prayed that the branches abiding in Him, The Vine, should maintain perfect unity, so that the world would believe that the Father sent His Son from heaven into world.
Again we find the truth of the last verse of the fifth chapter of Romans and the last verse of the sixth chapter of Romans running all through John’s Gospel. Note these two verses: “that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord” . . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Before we quote from John let us again read and believe II Timothy 1:9 and 10. In these verses we do not have what some Christians call “grace plus nothing.” We do have God’s unmixed grace gospel, eternal salvation without man’s works, but the tenth verse tells us what Christ had to do in order that God might save believing sinners by grace. So it is indeed “grace plus something.” Some church-members think that the news in II Timothy 1:9 and 10 is too good to be true. It is both good and true. Hear it and believe it with all your heart, the wonderful, glorious message of salvation by grace from the pen of the Lord’s faithful ‘grace’ messenger right before he departed to be with Christ, the grace messenger who suffered as a ‘malefactor (II Timothy 2:7 to 9), that you and I might have this glorious truth; “God, Who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel.”
Let us read the wonderful truth, which the risen Lord revealed to His ‘grace’ apostle to record, with Christ’s statement in John 10:17 and 18, “therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” Let us also read what Christ said to John long after He had abolished death and ascended far above all heavens, “I am He that liveth and was dead: and behold I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of hades and of death” (Revelation 1:18). Surely we can understand why the apostle Peter said to the eternal, omnipotent Christ, “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68). We can understand why the apostle Peter called the crucified and risen Son of God, “The Prince of Life.” (Acts 3:14 and 15).
What may surprise us is the fact that in Peter’s ministry recorded in the Book of Acts and in his two Epistles he did not mention even once “eternal life” or “everlasting life.” He wrote of an abundance entrance into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (II Peter 1:11), and that faithful teachers of the Word would be rewarded with the crown of glory; that Christians have been called by the God of all grace unto eternal glory by Christ Jesus.” (I Peter 5:4 to 10). Most Christians do not seem to like the other calling mentioned in Peter’s two Epistles; ‘suffering’.
As we compare John’s messages of “eternal life” with Paul’s messages of “eternal life,” we think of the truth in Titus 1:1 to 3:
ETERNAL LIFE WHICH GOD PROMISED BEFORE THE WORLD BEGAN
According to Titus 1:1 to 3, God, Who cannot lie, promised us eternal life before the world began. When we read John 3:16, let us read it; “God, Who cannot lie, so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Because of the appalling ignorance of the message and ministry and dispensation of the grace of God, which the risen Lord revealed to and through the apostle Paul, it is perhaps true that more believing sinners have been preached into the Body of Christ by hearing and believing John 3:16 than by all of the grace messages in Paul’s writings. Most of the evangelists and other Christian workers, who specialize in John 3:16, generally quote with this verse Paul’s message to the Philippian jailer, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved.” (Acts 16:31).
However, many people who claim to believe both John 3:16 and Acts 16:31 are not saved. This is because they do not believe, and apparently do not want to believe, that faith in Christ the Saviour means to accept the truth that He was delivered for our sins and raised again for our justification (Romans 4:24 and 25), that believers are reconciled to God by the death of Christ (Romans 5:10), that the saving gospel is the truth concerning the vicarious death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. (I Corinthians 15:1 to 4). For this reason evangelists, who preach John 3:16, should always be sure to include John 3:14 and 15: “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so much the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” When we read Christ’s words in John 6:47, “verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth in Me hath everlasting life” and in John 6:51, if any man eat of Him, the living Bread from heaven, he shall live for ever, we should read the rest of this verse: “the Bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Hear again the words of the Prince of Life in John 12:24, where we have another “verily, verily” (25 of which are in John’s Record), “except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
So think again of the glorious ‘grace’ gospel of II Timothy 1:9 and 10, the salvation that the believer has because of the work of Christ, with Christ’s words at the time He raised Lazarus from the dead: “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” (John 11:25 and 26).
In John’s First Epistle believers are told how they can know that they have passed out of death into life; that they have been made alive. In Romans 6:13 believers are told what to do to please God because they are “alive from the dead.” In John’s Gospel sinners are told how to pass from death to life. In the recorded messages of both Paul and John we are told that sinners are required to do nothing to receive God’s free gift, “eternal life,” except to believe. By believing they pass out of death into life. (John 5:24 and 25 . . . John 11:25 . . . John 3:16 . . . John 3:15). So we read in John 3:36: “he that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life.” But in John 8:24 we have these solemn words of the Prince of Life, “if ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins.”
In the very beginning of John’s Record we read concerning God in human form, “in Him was life: and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4). Near the close of His life on earth the Lord Jesus prayed to His Father; “Thou has given Him (Christ) power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” (John 17:4). When we read this statement in John 17:4 with John 6:37, “all that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out,” we think of the statement concerning Paul’s ministry in Acts 13:48, “as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” But of course we must not exclude human responsibility, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus in John 5:40, “ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” We are asked frequently how we can reconcile this with Christ’s statement in John 6:65, “no man can come to Me, except it were given unto him of My Father.” (John 6:45). Our answer is, we preach God’s sovereign grace and omniscience and man’s responsibility, and permit the Holy Spirit to do the reconciling. Surely if you have carefully compared the ninth chapter of Romans with the tenth chapter, you know how utterly helpless is any theologian or Bible-teacher to reconcile the truth contained in them or to explain to the satisfaction of all the truth of Ephesians 1:4 and 5 and Ephesians 1:11 concerning the Body of Christ. In these verses we read: “according as He (God) hath chosen us in Him (Christ) before the ‘overthrow’ of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”
But now to the good news of Romans 8:1 to 39, beginning with “no condemnation” for the believer, and ending with “no separation” for the believer. With this good news read John 10:28 to 31. In Romans 8:36 to 39 we learn that though believers may be counted as sheep for the slaughter, no thing or no person can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Now the wonderful words of Christ, the glorious good news in John 10:28 to 30, “I give unto them ‘eternal life’, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father, Who gave them Me, is greater than all: and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand. I and Father are ONE.”
Every person, by faith in the crucified and resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, passes out of death into life. By the same act of faith, at the same time, that person is justified from all things. (Acts 13:39). A justified believer has righteousness, redemption and sanctification, because he has Christ. (I Corinthians 1:30, Ephesians 1:6 and 7 and II Thessalonians 2:13).
As we wonder why the words “righteousness,” “redemption,” “justification,” “forgiveness,” “reconciliation,” “hope” and “salvation” are not found in John’s Record (except the two verses John 4:22 and John 16:10), whereas they are found in Paul’s ministry about 200 times, it is interesting to note that in John’s Gospel and in his First Epistle we find “eternal life” or “everlasting life” more than in Matthew, Mark, Luke and in all of Paul’s fourteen Epistles and in his recorded oral ministry in the Book of Acts. In these two Books by John “eternal life” or “everlasting life” is mentioned 22 times; only 20 times in the other eighteen Books. These two words together are not found in any of Peter’s recorded ministry or in the Epistle of James. They are found once in Jude.
Surely the theme of John’s Gospel is “everlasting life.” Many times in this Record the word “life” and “live” refer to everlasting life. The Lord Jesus said, in John 14:19, “because I live, ye shall live also.” Note in Revelation 2:8 how the risen Christ is described: “the first and the last, Who was dead, and is alive,” yes, “alive for evermore.” (Revelation 1:18).
Surely no Spirit-taught child of God can read Romans 6:13 and Ephesians 2:5 and 6 and believe in the heathen doctrine of soul-sleeping. Many religious church-member, including some who are saved, do not seem to appreciate having been raised up and made to sit down in the heavenlies in Christ, alive from the dead, but delight to prove by Ecclesiastes 9:5 and 10 that Paul was mistaken when he said, “absent from the body present with the Lord.”
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH
We are told in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38, that the just shall live by faith. In Romans 5:18 we read that by righteousness of Christ justification of life was provided for the human race. “The free gift of God is eternal life.” (Romans 6:23). But this is through Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ said, “I am the life.” (John 14:6).
The Bible is the story of death and life. Adam and Eve chose death in preference to life. They sinned. Death passed upon all men. (Romans 5:12). The law of sin and death is still in full force. In Deuteronomy 30:19 the living God spoke these words: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you: I have set before you life and death . . . chose life that ye may live.” God sent His only Begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.” (I John 4:9). Therefore to choose life means to choose Christ. To become religious without receiving eternal life means to be twice dead, plucked up by the roots. (Jude 12).
Note the great contrast between life and death, wages and free gift in Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).
We read in Hebrews 2:14 that Satan had the power of death. We read in Hebrews 7:16 that Christ is made after the power of an endless or deathless life. We read in Acts 1:3, that, Christ after His death showed Himself alive by many infallible proofs. By His death and resurrection Christ destroyed Satan’s death power. But Christ had to die that the children of Adam might live. Those who choose to live receive Christ and by the law of the Spirit of life in Him they are freed from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2). When the Gentiles received the Lord’s message through Peter and believed, “God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.” (Acts 11:18). Later on we are told that the Gentiles, who had been dead in sins, far off from God, having no hope in the world (Ephesians 2:1 to 5; 11 and 12), were made alive together with Christ and made to sit down in the heavenlies in Christ. (Ephesians 2:5 and 6). They were raised from the dead, to walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4 and 13). They were begotten into, or unto, a living hope by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, unto an incorruptible, heavenly inheritance. (I Peter 1:3 to 5). Paul wrote in Philippians 4:3 of Christians working with him, “whose names are in the Book of Life.” In Revelation ‘the Book of Life’ is mentioned seven times. In the New Testament Scriptures God is called sixteen times ‘The Living God’. In Mark 12:27 and Luke 20:38 God is called ‘the God of the Living’. Again we read in II Timothy 1:1 that God’s promise of life is in Christ Jesus. “He that hath not the Son hath not life.” (I John 5:12).
In I Timothy 4:8 we are reminded of the life that now is and that which is to come. In Ephesians 1:21, we are told of the world that now is, and that which is to come. The Lord Jesus, in Mark 10:30 told of the blessing on earth of being His disciple, and then added; “and in the world to come eternal life.”
As we think of all that is said in the Bible about death and life, and read God’s solemn warning, in Hebrews 9:27, “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this judgment,” let us think of some words from the Lord in the Old Testament Scriptures and in the New: “why will ye die, O house of Israel: for I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God, wherefore turn and live ye.” (Ezekiel 18:31 and 32). And then II Peter 3:9 we read that God “is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (I Timothy 2:4 to 7). Christ could continuously say to sinners to day what He said in John 5:40: “ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” “And this life is in His Son.” (I John 5:11). “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36).
God is still giving to self-righteous religious church-members, who are trusting for eternal life, in God and good works, the truth of Galatians 3:21: “if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” Paul had been under the law; but after receiving Christ as Saviour Paul was crucified to the law: but he added: “Nevertheless I live . . . I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20).
All who have life in Christ Jesus are “alive from the dead” (Romans 6:13). They have been made alive together with Christ. Then when Christ, Who is our life, shall appear, they shall appear with Him in glory. In the meantime they are seated with Him in the heavenlies and are to seek those things which are above. (Colossians 3:1 to 4 . . . Ephesians 2:5 and 6). In I Corinthians 15:22, with reference to the resurrection of the body, we are told that those who are Christ’s will be made alive at His coming.
The words “life,” “live,” “alive,” “quicken,” “liveth,” “living,” referring to spiritual and eternal life, are found in the New Testament Scriptures about 200 times. They are found in John’s Writings about 105 times. In Revelation we read of “the Book of Life” . . . “the Tree of Life” . . . “the Water of Life” . . . “the Spirit of Life” . . . “the Crown of Life.”
When we see that the word “life” in different forms is used in John’s Gospel about sixty times, and as we read in John 5:26 and John 17:2 that the Lord Jesus had life in Himself and power to give eternal life, and learn in John 20:31, that John’s Record was handed down to us, that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that we might have life through believing in His name, we see why we may call John’s Gospel, “The Book of Life.”
Is Christianity A Creed Or A Life:
A Modernist pastor had this statement printed on a sign-board in front of his church-building: “In this Church we do not ask that you subscribe to a creed: we ask that you live a life.” It is easy to see his answer to the question, “is Christianity a creed or a life?” That pastor should have acknowledged that he was only a make-believe Christian and not a Bible Christian. Of course we are all agreed that there is not enough of what is called ‘practical Christianity’ in this world, but the church-member is very, very ignorant who says “what we believe is unimportant: the all-important thing is what we do.” Just one answer from the Lord Jesus should cause them to revise this statement. When the very religious people asked the Lord Jesus what they could do to work the works of God (John 6:28), the Saviour replied; “this is the work of God that ye believe in Him Whom He hath sent.”
A creed is a belief. Eternal Life is the free gift of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 6:23). The Lord Jesus said, “if ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins.” (John 8:24). The Lord Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth in Me hath everlasting life.” (John 6:47 . . . John 3:36 . . . John 11:25 and 26). Note carefully John 3:36: “but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life: but the wrath of God abideth on him.” This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life: he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (I John 4:10 to 12). He that believeth not this record hath made God a liar. (I John 4:10). According to the Bible, “no creed . . . no life.” Certainly no person can live the life until that person receives the life. God gives life to believers. John wrote his Record, “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name.” (John 20:31). In I Timothy 1:16 the apostle wrote of those who would believe in Christ to life everlasting. In Galatians 3:21 and 22 we learn that members of the human race could not find life by living a life or by religious doings; only by faith in Christ. Christianity is both a creed and a life. It has been said that Christianity is life, love and heaven. In the Gospel of John all through the Book we find
BELIEVE . . . LIFE . . . LOVE.
In John’s Gospel we find the word ‘believe’ one hundred times. In John’s Gospel and in His First Epistle we find the word ‘love’ in various forms about one hundred times. In these two Books we find “life” or “live” about seventy-five times. Note I John 4:9: “in this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him.” Note I John 4:10: “not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Then I John 4:19: “we love Him, because He first loved us.”
In John’s Gospel we are told many times that eternal life is because of our creed or belief. Christ’s words in John 5:24 are clearly and definitely spoken; that, by believing, sinners pass out of death into life. In John’s First Epistle believers are instructed how to know that they have passed out of death into life; “because we love.” (I John 3:14). “These things have I, written unto you that believe on the Name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” (I John 5:13).
NO CREED BUT CHRIST - NO LAW BUT LOVE
We mentioned the motto of the Modernist preacher. Quite a different motto was printed on the wall inside a church-building where an assembly of evangelical ‘grace’ Christians worshipped. These words were printed on the wall: “No creed but Christ . . . No law but Love.” Undoubtedly the pastor had in mind I John 3:23 when he had the sign made. Note I John 3:23: “And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment.”
John remembered the words of the Lord Jesus, recorded in John 13:34, John 14:15, John 14:24, John 15:12, John 15:17: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another: as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” . . . “If ye love Me, keep My commandments” . . . “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me.” . . . “This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” . . . “These things that I command you, that ye love one another.”
We read in Ecclesiastes 12:13: “fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man,” and after reading the twenty-one chapters of John’s Gospel, we might conclude that the whole duty of man is to receive eternal life by believing and then love all the others who have likewise received eternal life by receiving Christ.
We are told in Galatians 3:14 that the person who meets God at Calvary, receiving Christ as Saviour, receives the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 3:2 we learn that the believer receives the Holy Spirit by the hearing of faith. In Galatians 5:22 we learn that the fruit of the Spirit is love. There is a love that is not the fruit of the Spirit. But the love that God wants manifested by the believer is the fruit of the Spirit. The unbeliever, or the religious person who contends for a ‘creedless’ Christianity, cannot receive the Holy Spirit. (John 14:17). Therefore the love of the unbeliever is not the fruit of the Spirit and is not the love that is acceptable unto the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
In Micah 6:8 we read what God requires of man . . . “to do justly” . . . “to love mercy” . . . “to walk humbly with thy God.” We acknowledge that this is quite an assignment. As we meditate upon it we think of Paul’s words in Romans 7:18: “but how to perform that which is good I find not.” But after he asked how the wretched man could be delivered, he said, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 7:24 and 25). Then Christians thank God for the truth of Romans 8:3, what the ten commandments could not do for the human race, because of indwelling sin and human weakness, God sent His Son to do. Then Christians were able to say what Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified (to the law) with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” In this verse we learn that Christianity is both a creed and a life, and why John wrote, “we love Him, because He first loved us.”
The Lord Jesus reduced the ten commandments to two commandments when He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” . . . and the second is like unto it: “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:37 to 39). It is not difficult to understand after reading these ‘love’ commandments the statement of Paul in I Timothy 1:5 and Galatians 5:14: “The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart” . . . “For all the law is fulfilled in one word: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Note in Romans 13:9 we are told that all of the commandments are comprehended in this saying, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Then Romans 13:10: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
We are told in Galatians 5:22 and 23 when the believer walks in the Spirit and manifests the fruit of the spirit, love . . . “against such there is no law.” Love is the end of the commandment. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. (Romans 10:4). Christ is the believer’s righteousness. (I Corinthians 1:30). Christ is the believer’s LIFE. (Colossians 3:4 . . . John 14:6). “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Christ was lifted up on the cross that believers might have everlasting life. (John 3:14 and 15). How? By believing. Believers are complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10), are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), and in believers the love of God is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit Who is given them. ( Romans 5:5).
Perhaps we understand now why the motto of the ‘grace’ pastor, “No creed but Christ: No law but Love.” Certainly we should know that John’s Gospel is a Message of Believe . . . Live . . . Love.
IN JOHN’S GOSPEL THE LOVE COMMANDMENTS
GIVEN TO BELIEVERS
Let us again compare the messages in John’s Record with those in Matthew and those in Paul’s ‘grace’ messages in his Epistles. Paul’s epistles were written to saints, or saved members of the Body of Christ. In the Book of Matthew we learn that the Lord Jesus, as a Minister of the circumcision (Romans 15:8) (sent only to Israel . . . Matthew 15:24), spoke of Israel as “the children of the kingdom.” (Matthew 8:12). In the sermon on the mount, the Our Father prayer, the golden rule and in the kingdom parables Christ addressed His messages to saved Jews and unsaved Jews. In the Book of Matthew we learn that the Lord Jesus gave to Israelites, saved and unsaved, more than fifty commands and orders to obey, including a number of law ordinances and ceremonies. It is not an easy task to preach the gospel of grace to a Gentile out of the Book of Matthew. It has to be interpreted in the light of Paul’s messages.
In John’s Gospel we read in John 1:16, “of Christ’s fulness have all we received, and grace upon grace.” In John’s Message salvation is by grace through faith in Christ. Instead of more than fifty commands and ceremonies, recorded in Matthew, the one thing the unsaved Israelites are told to do in John’s Gospel is ‘believe’. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of John, in which chapters the ‘love’ commandments are found, the Lord Jesus was speaking to believers, His disciples to those who had received Him. They were told to love after they had received life by believing.
This is also the order in the Epistles of both Paul and Peter. In I Peter 1:22 the instructions of Peter were for ‘saints’, believers who were alive from the dead. He urged them to unfeigned love: “love one another with a pure heart fervently.” In Romans 13:8, Ephesians 5:2, Ephesians 3:17 and Ephesians 4:2, I Timothy 6:11, II Timothy 1:13, and in other verses, Paul exhorted saints to love. In the great ‘love’ chapter in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, the Holy Spirit, Who tells us in I Corinthians 13:13 that love is the greatest of the things that remain, instructs living saints as to the great importance of proving that they are living saints by manifesting the fruit of the Spirit, love; assuring those who are alive from the dead that “love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; and never faileth.” (I Corinthians 7 and 8).
Some Bible-teachers hesitate to call John’s Gospel the ‘grace’ gospel, because in John’s Gospel those to whom Christ spoke were told to keep His commandments and love. The Lord gave the ‘love’ commandments to believers in John’s Gospel, chapters thirteen to sixteen. If this is proof that John’s Record does not contain the ‘grace’ gospel, we could say the same concerning Paul’s messages in which believers are instructed to love and yield unto God as those who are alive from the dead. (Romans 6:13).
ACCORDING TO JOHN’S RECORD WHAT GOSPEL
DID CHRIST AND JOHN PREACH?
We have observed that the word ‘gospel’ is not found once in the twenty-one chapters of John’s Record. We have also observed that in the twenty-one chapters of John, aside from the statement in John 3:22 and 4:1 and 2 that the disciples were with Christ baptizing, we have very, very little information in John’s Record as to the preaching ministry of the twelve apostles, who are not called apostles in John. In Luke 9:1 to 6 and Matthew 10:5 to 8 we learn that the twelve were instructed to preach ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ and perform miracles, or permit the Lord to perform miracles by them. We learn in Matthew 4:23 and Matthew 9:35 that Jesus Christ was carrying on the same ministry which He instructed and empowered the twelve to carry on; the ministry which is explained in Acts 2:22, that Jesus of Nazareth was in the midst of Israel, a Man approved of God by wonders and signs. In Matthew 4:23 and Matthew 9:35 we learn that Christ on earth, a Minister of the circumcision with a program in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (Romans 15:8 . . . Galatians 4:4), was preaching ‘the gospel of the kingdom’.
It is interesting to study together Luke 9:6, Luke 18:31 to 35 with I Corinthians 15:1 to 4. In Luke 9:6 we read concerning the apostle John and eleven other apostles: “they departed, and went through the towns preaching ‘the gospel’, and healing everywhere.” In I Corinthians 15:1 to 4 we have the gospel of salvation for this present age and dispensation stated very definitely in such plain language that any rational adult should understand it with one reading; namely, the truth that, in fulfillment of prophecy, the Lord of Glory, Christ, died for our sins, and was buried and rose the third day. What do we read about this gospel in these four verses? Paul received it from the Lord. It is the gospel by which believers are saved. Some months after the twelve apostles preached the gospel and healed (Luke 9:6), “healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, casting out demons” (Matthew 10:7 and 8)”, Christ told them that He was going to experience the events of I Corinthians 15:1 to 4 which would provide the saving gospel for sinners. Read what the apostles did, according to Luke 18:31 to 35, when the Lord Jesus told them He was going to be rejected, delivered to the Gentiles, be put to death, and the third day rise again: “they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them; neither knew they the things which were spoken.” As you compare Luke 18.31 to 34 with I Corinthians 15:1 to 4, keep in mind that the twelve apostles had preached the gospel and performed miracles of healing months before Christ told them of His coming death and resurrection. Certainly any minister of Christ, who teaches, after reading these several Scriptures, that there is only one gospel in the New Testament Scriptures, and who does not know the difference between ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ and ‘the gospel of the grace of God’ (Acts 20:24 . . . Ephesians 3:1 to 3), is certainly not a faithful steward of the mysteries of God (I Corinthians 4:1 to 4), but is rather a workman who needeth to be ashamed because he does not rightly divide the Word of Truth. ( II Timothy 2:15).
We mentioned the fact that there are 741 verses in the first seventeen chapters of John, up to the time that Christ was betrayed by Judas with a kiss, and that in more than 700 of the 741 verses facts are recorded not found in Matthew, Mark and Luke, in all of the 2900 verses in these three Records. Of these seventeen chapters of John there are thirteen solid chapters of facts not recorded in the other three Books.
In all of the chapters in Matthew, Mark and Luke, up to the time of the betrayal of Christ, more than ninety-five percent of the facts contained in them are not recorded in John’s Gospel. In John nothing of the birth of Jesus, nothing of the wise men or the shepherds keeping their flock, nothing of the flight to Egypt, nothing of the murder of the infants around Bethlehem, nothing stating that John’s baptism was for the remission of sins, nothing of Satan’s temptation of Christ, nothing of the call of the four fishermen while mending and cleaning their nets, nothing of the call of Levi (Matthew) the publican and the feast which he made for the Saviour and other publicans, nothing of the beatitudes, the sermon on the mount, the golden rule, the ‘Our Father’ kingdom prayer. There is nothing in John of the thirteen or fourteen ‘kingdom’ parables in Matthew. As we related, the word ‘kingdom’ is found 55 times in 55 verses in Matthew, whereas the word ‘kingdom’ is found in only three verses in John; namely, John 3:3, John 3:5 and John 18:36.
In John’s Gospel is presented a phase of the kingdom different in many respects from the kingdom presented in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Matthew alone, as we said, the children of the kingdom (Matthew 8:12) are instructed to obey many things which belonged to God’s Old Testament program, about 56 such orders. In John the one thing the unbelieving children of the kingdom are told to do, is ‘believe’. Read the first seventeen chapters of John and learn all that the Lord Jesus told his believing disciples to do. As the all-important work of the unbelievers was to believe, so the all-important work for the believers to do, was to keep the Lord’s ‘love’ commandment and wash one another’s feet.
We repeat that we cannot find in these seventeen chapters what gospel the twelve preached, or what they were instructed to preach. We do not find that they performed any miracles, or that they were told to do so, although we read in John 14:12, greater works shall the believer do, because Christ was going to His Father.
According to the documentary evidence, John’s Record of the life and ministry, sayings and doings, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, in which Record we do not find the word ‘gospel’, we must decide that if Christ was preaching the gospel of the kingdom, that gospel was likewise the gospel of grace. According to John 3:17 and 18 those who believed in Christ were not condemned. According to John 3:14 to 16 those who believed in Christ received eternal life. According to John 5:24 those who believed in God’s Word and God’s Son passed out of death into life. According to John 1:12 and 13 those who believed in Christ and received Him as Saviour became the regenerated sons of God. According to John 6:29 and 6:40 those who believed in Christ did the will of God and the work of God. According to John 1:16 those who believed in Christ received of His fulness, and grace upon grace. According to John 3:18 unbelievers were condemned because they did not believe in Christ: upon such the wrath of God abideth forever (John 3:36); and they shall die in their sins. (John 8:24).
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST IN JOHN’S GOSPEL.
In John 16:7 to 9 the Lord Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit after He ascended up to heaven. In John 14:3 the Lord Jesus said, “I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” Then the Lord’s petition of John 17:24 in behalf of His disciples will be realized; they will be where Christ is, and will behold His glory. John was directed to write in his First Epistle, that God’s children should so live that they will not be ashamed before Christ at His coming (parousia). Then he added, “we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.” The word ‘coming’ in I John 2:28 is the Greek ‘parousia’. The word ‘appear’ in I John 3:2 is ‘phaneroo’. In Matthew, Mark and Luke we learn that Israel and the rest of humanity will be plunged into a time of distress and sorrow, called “the great tribulation”; that the Lord Jesus, as the Son of Man, will come and saved His ‘kingdom’ nation out of that great tribulation which will be shortened for the Lord’s elect’s sake. (Matthew 24:21 and 22). According to Luke 21:27 to 33, the Son of Man will save Israel. According to Luke 14:14, the Lord’s disciples will be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.
As we learned that nothing of the thirteen or fourteen ‘kingdom’ parables of Matthew are mentioned in John’s Record, likewise nothing of the return of the Son of Man to save Israel out of the great tribulation is mentioned in John’s Record. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, in James, in Peter’s two Epistles, in Jude, in John’s First Epistle, in Revelation and in at least ten of Paul’s fourteen Epistles, we learn that the Lord Jesus is going to appear the second time apart from sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:28). Those that are Christ’s shall be made alive at His coming. (I Corinthians 15:22 and 23). In II Thessalonians 1:7 to 10 we learn that the Lord Jesus will come in awful judgment, “when He shall have come to be admired in all that believe.” (1:10). Then He will come to this earth as the Son of Man. (Luke 18:18).
John tells us nothing concerning Jesus as King and judge on the throne of His glory. (Matthew 25:31 to 47). John does not tell us concerning the wars and famines and pestilences and earthquakes and the end of the world (age), described in Matthew 24:3 to 12. John tells us nothing of the course and culmination of “the times of the Gentiles” which will continue until the Son of Man shall come in a cloud with power and great glory. (Luke 21:24 to 33 . . . Matthew 24:30 and 31). In Matthew 24:31 we learn that the Lord’s angels will be sent to gather His elect. In Mark 8:38 we read that the Son of Man is coming in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. In Jude 13 and 14 we read, “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones.” In II Thessalonians 1:7 to 10 we read that the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels to take vengeance on unbelievers when “He shall have come (elthe) to be glorified in His saints.”
Many, many times the apostle Paul mentions the coming, or the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, stating that Christ’s appearing in glory for the Church, Which is His Body, is the blessed hope of members of that Body. (Titus 2:13 . . . Philippians 3:20 and 21 . . . Colossians 3:4). But Paul never calls the Lord Jesus, “the Son of Man,” in His relation to the Church, Which is His Body.
The apostle John, in John 1:50 and 51, records Christ’s words to Nathaniel (meaning ‘the gift of God’), “Thou shalt see greater things than these . . . Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” When we read John 6:62, John 8:28 and especially John 3:13, we do not wonder that the bewildered, perplexed Jews asked the question:
WHO IS THIS SON OF MAN (John 12:34)
Note John 6:62, John 8:28 and John 3:13: “What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before?” . . . “When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then, shall ye know that I AM” . . . “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, the Son of Man Who is in heaven.” In Revelation 1:13 we read that the apostle John, on the Isle of Patmos, saw One like unto the Son of Man standing in the midst of seven churches (symbolized). Then in chapters four and five John saw into the open heavens more than the Son of Man and angels or holy ones.
Of course we would like to know all that the apostle Paul saw when He was caught away to the third heavens, caught away into Paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. (II Corinthians 12:1 to 6). Paul testified in Galatians 1:11 and 12 and Ephesians 3:1 to 3 that he received his ‘grace’ gospel by revelation and his knowledge of the mystery of Christ concerning the dispensation of the grace of God for Gentiles by revelation. Paul, by a special revelation, visited the other apostles at Jerusalem. (Galatians 2:1 and 2).
As we said, Paul mentioned the second coming or appearing in glory of the Lord Jesus in at least ten of his fourteen Epistles, but never referred to the Lord Jesus either as “the Son of Man” or as “Jesus of Nazareth” in writing to Gentiles or in speaking to them. There is some hidden and significant meaning to Paul’s words in II Corinthians 5:16: “though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.”
When Stephen said to Israel, “behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56), that is the first time, so far as the New Testament is concerned, that any person other than Christ Himself used the title “The Son of Man.” The one exception is the question of the Jews in John 12:34, “Who is this Son of Man?” This title is found in Matthew 32 times; in Mark, 15 times; in Luke, 26 times; in John, 12 times. The total 85 times. In speaking of Himself as ‘The Son of Man’, the Lord Jesus declared that He had power on earth to forgive sins and that He was Lord of the sabbath day. (Luke 5:24 and Luke 6:5).
In the verses where the Lord Jesus, in John’s Record, calls Himself “The Son of Man,” the statements concerning the Son of man in these verses differ from all of the seventy-three statements concerning “The Son of Man” in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In John 5:22 and 5:27 we learn that the Father hath committed all judgment unto His Son, “because He is the Son of Man.”
It is not easy to understand the meaning of Christ’s words to Nathanael (the gift of God) in John 1:51: “hereafter ye shall see the heavens open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” But this takes us back to Luz and Jacob, to pillows of stone, a ladder, and God’s promise to and concerning Israel and their God-given land and their future earthly glory. If you will read Genesis 28:10 to 22, you should find it one of the most interesting stories in the Bible. If you prayerfully study this wonderful experience of Jacob and God’s guarantee, you should believe Romans 11:26 to 29, “all Israel shall be saved; as it is written: There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is My covenant, when I shall take away their sins . . . they are beloved for the fathers’ sake (the fathers are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob): for the gifts of God are without repentance.” Remember that Nathanael means “the gift of God.”
Now the interesting and significant experience of Jacob in Genesis 28:10 to 22: “He took stones for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on the earth; and the top reached to heaven: and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending upon it.” “And behold, the Lord stood above it.” Then read what follows; for there the Lord God confirmed all that He had promised to Abraham and Israel in His covenant and oath; to establish Israel in Canaan. “I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” (Genesis 28:15). Jacob awaked and he said, “surely the Lord is in this place . . . This is none other than the House of God, and the gate of heaven.” Then Jacob poured oil on the stones which had been his pillow and called the place ‘Bethel’, meaning “the House of God.”
Keep in mind one reason why God will save Israel. “For Abraham’s sake, for Isaac’s sake, for Jacob’s sake; for the fathers’ sake.” (Romans 11:28). But according to Ezekiel 36:21 and 22 and 36:31 and 32, the Lord God will save Israel for the Lord God’s sake. It is impossible for God to lie. (Hebrews 6:18). God confirmed His covenant of promise with an oath. (Hebrews 6:17). And God will save Israel, because His gift is without repentance. (Romans 11:29).
As we read the thirty-sixth chapter of Ezekiel, that God will save Israel for His own Holy Name’s sake, note in Ezekiel 36:25 to 29 that God will make a ‘NATHANIEL’ out of all Israelites, who shall know the Lord from the least to the greatest. (Hebrews 8:11 and 12). Then the Lord will say “Behold, Israelites in whom there is no guile,” as He said concerning Nathaniel, “behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” (John 1:47). The cleansed, guileless Israelites will say, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God: Thou art the King of Israel.” (John 1:49). Read about the ‘FIG TREE’ in I Kings 4:25, Psalm 105:33, Micah 4:4 and Zechariah 3:10. “They (Israel) shall sit every man under his fig tree: and none shall make him afraid.” (Micah 4:4). In referring to the signs of the second coming of the Son of Man, Christ said, in Luke 21:29, “behold, the fig trees and all the trees.”
Christ said to Nathanael (the gift of God); “I saw thee under the fig tree.” (John 1:50). Before the Lord sees His kingdom nation under their own vine and fig tree, He will see them in the time of Jacob’s trouble; but Jacob shall be saved out of it. (Jeremiah 30:7 to 9; 18). Since the day that Christ came unto His own and His own received Him not (John 1:11), since the day “the children of the kingdom” were cast into darkness (Matthew 8:12), since the day Israel said concerning Christ, “we will not have This Man to reign over us (Luke 19:14),” we have been living in “the times of the Gentiles,” politically and spiritually. Israel will be saved when “the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24), when “the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Romans 11:25).
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF JOHN . . . . THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS.
According to Romans 11:7 to 15, when Israel received not Christ in incarnation and in resurrection (John 1:11 . . . 12:37 to 42 . . . Matthew 21:42 . . . Acts 5:29 to 32 Acts 13:26 to 46) God blinded Israel; Israel had a fall; Israel was cast away. Because of Israel’s unbelief (Romans 11:30), their blindness and fall, and because God cast Israel away, the Gentiles obtained mercy. Salvation and reconciliation and riches were offered the Gentiles. God ushered in “the dispensation of the grace of God for Gentiles.” (Ephesians 3:1 to 4). God suspended or interrupted His prophesied ‘kingdom’ program, postponing it until He accomplishes His eternal purpose concerning His unprophesied Body of Christ.
Perhaps, in reading the first chapter of John’s Gospel, we have wondered why we are told that Christ came unto His own and His own received Him not (John 1:11), before we read, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14). Also it is interesting and significant to read that Christ’s own received Him not and the statement that “the law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), before John the Baptist said concerning Jesus, “behold, the Lamb of God, Who beareth away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29). Then follows John’s explanation of his water baptism for Israel: “I am come baptizing with water, that Christ should be made manifest to Israel.” (John 1:31). Water baptisms were first imposed on Israel at Sinai, with the giving of the law. (Hebrews 9:10).
By studying the first chapter of John we shall find interesting and significant statements between the first verses, presenting the Lord Jesus as the eternal God, Creator of all things, and the Lord Jesus “hereafter” as the Son of Man with God’s angels ascending and descending on Him, as they did on Jacob’s (Israel’s) ladder. There must be a reason why Simon is told by the Lord Jesus, in the very first chapter of John, that he is to be called ‘a Stone’, whereas in Matthew’s Record the Lord did not say this unto Simon until Matthew 16:18.
It is likewise interesting to note that we reach Matthew 21:42 before the Lord Jesus tells Israel, in Matthew, that He is the Stone rejected by Israel, in fulfillment of Psalm 118:19 to 25, whereas this we read in the very first part of the first chapter of John. (1:11). Then note in John 11:47 to 52 the prediction of the high-priest that Jesus would give Himself a ransom for Jews and Gentiles. Then in chapter twelve, verses 37 to 41, we have Israel’s rejection of the Stone explained in detail. In these verses (John 12:37 to 41) we learn that the rejection is mutual; that God’s wrath will be visited upon Israel; that He will blind their eyes, and harden their hearts. As we have mentioned, John 12:37 to 41, recorded before the death and resurrection of the Lamb of God, takes us back to Isaiah 6:9 and 10 and to Isaiah 53:1. According to Isaiah 53:3 and 7, God’s Only Begotten Son was to be despised and rejected, and led as a Lamb to the slaughter. Satan, Judas, Israel, the Gentiles, “the rulers of this world” (I Corinthians 2:8), all conspired together to kill “the Prince of Life” (Acts 3:14 and 15 and Acts 4:24 to 28). But Christ was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23). Yes, it was “The Lord’s Doing;” and it is marvelous in our eyes. (Matthew 21:42). “It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.” (Matthew 18:1 and Matthew 26:24).
As we read in Acts 4:24 to 28, that the rulers and kings stood up to do to Christ whatsoever God’s hand and counsel determined before to be done, when He was rejected in incarnation and murdered by His enemies, let us understand, in the light of Ephesians 1:11, that Israel rejected their Messiah in resurrection, that God might accomplish His eternal purpose concerning the Church Which is to be with Christ ‘One flesh’. (Ephesians 5:31 and 32). It again was the “Lord’s doing.” (Romans 11:33 and 34). Note Ephesians 1:11: “In Whom (Christ) have we (members of His Body) obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.”
The Father of glory truly wants every member of Christ’s Body to know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. (Ephesians 1:18). Only those who know this most glorious truth for saints in all of the Bible are qualified to obey Ephesians 3:9, “make all see what is the dispensation of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been ‘HID IN GOD’.” (Colossians 1:25 and 26). In Ephesians 1:16 and 17 we learn how to know the truth of the rest of that first chapter of Ephesians.
It is utterly impossible for any Christian to understand “what is the dispensation of the mystery” until that Christian understands the full meaning and significance of the mystery of Romans 11:25 and 26: “I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this ‘mystery’, lest ye should be wise in your own conceit, that blindness in part is happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written.”
When will Israel’s Messiah say to Israel what He said to Nathaniel, “behold, an Israelite in whom there is no guile”? (John 1:47). When the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. When will redeemed Israel say to Christ, “Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel?” (John 1:49). When the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:2) and shall take away ungodliness from Jacob (Romans 11:26). Why? Because the gifts of God are without repentance. (Romans 11:29). Nathanael means “the gift of God.” Then Israel shall see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
Read Acts 13:5 to 15 and learn that ‘BAR-JESUS”, (the Child of Jehovah the Saviour), blind and full of guile, speaks of Israel blind and full of guile from Romans 11:7 to 9 and 11:25 down to the present time. Nathanael, without guile, speaks of the fulfillment of Romans 11:26 to 29 concerning Israel’s future election, for the fathers’ sake. In all of this we are reminded of Joseph’s words in Genesis 45:4 to 8; “not you that sent me hither; but God.”
The child of God, who does not learn in Acts 5:29 to 32 and in Acts 13:23 and 33, and in other Scriptures, that God raised up Christ twice to be Israel’s Saviour, in incarnation and in resurrection, that Israel twice rejected Him before He pronounced His judgment of I Thessalonians 2:14 to 16 and Romans 11:7 to 11, and see that it was all the ‘Lord’s’ doing, will never understand “The MYSTERY OF CHRIST” in Ephesians and Colossians.
GRACE AND TRUTH CAME BY JESUS CHRIST
“Of Christ’s fulness have all we received and grace upon grace” (John 1:16). This we read in between two statements, John 1:11 and John 1:17: “He came unto His own and His own received Him not” . . . “The law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Think now of Romans 5:20 and 21: “Moreover the law entered that sin (that entered by Adam) might abound. But where sin abounded grace did much more abound; That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
In Galatians 3:8 to 19 we learn that God added the law (for Israel) to the gospel which He preached to Abram (Galatians 3:8) until the Seed (Jesus Christ) came and with Him grace and truth, and later the reign of grace and the dispensation of grace.
After reading Galatians 3:24 and 25 and II Corinthians 3:7 to 15, Colossians 2:13 to 16 and Hebrews 8:9 to 13, with Galatians 3:19, we learn that the law dispensation was both parenthetical and temporary.
After reading Jeremiah 31:31 to 37 and Amos 9:11 to 15, and Acts 3:19 to 26 and Romans 11:25 to 33, with Ephesians 3:1 to 3, we should certainly know that God suspended and interrupted His prophesied ‘kingdom’ program, and that we are living in a temporary and parenthetical dispensation of grace; that during this unprophesied period God is making ‘One New Man’, by reconciling believers in One Body by the cross. (Ephesians 2:15 and 16).
In the Gospel of John we find the word ‘JEW’ about 70 times, the word ‘WORLD’ about 77 times. We find in John the words ‘eternal life’ more than in any other Book in the Bible. We find that the sinner is told to do one thing in John’s Record, ‘BELIEVE’, which word is found 100 times. In John’s Record we do not find the word “gospel.” We do not find the word “repent.” We find nothing of baptism unto repentance for the remission of sins. We do not find once what the Lord told His messengers to preach. We have Christ’s words in John 6:29 that God’s work for the sinner is to believe in Christ; and, in John 6:40, this is God’s will. We learn in John 5:24 and John 11:25, that the person who believes in Christ passes out of death into life; receives eternal life as a gift (John 10:28); and is not condemned. (John 3:18) (John 3:36). We find in John 3:14 and 15 that sinners, by believing are born anew. We find in John’s Record that sinners are dead; and that the great sin is unbelief, rejecting God’s grace which came by Jesus Christ (John 8:24, John 16:8 and 9). “As many as received Him to them was given the right to become the sons of God, by regeneration.” (John 1:11 to 13).
Christ, in John, is presented as the “Saviour of the World” (John 4:42), Who was not sent by His Father to condemn the world but to save the world (John 3:17), Who said, “I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47), Who went to the cross, saying “Now is the judgment of this world. . . “I will draw all men unto Myself” (John 12:30 to 33). Therefore when we are asked what gospel is presented in the words printed in John’s Record, we should answer “the gospel by which the world can be saved.” But when we preach John 3:16 we should include John 3:14 and 15; for salvation is by Christ and His cross.
Added material after close of “The Gospel of John” by J. C. O’Hair
GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THY STEWARDSHIP
Read the words of the Lord Jesus in Luke 16:1 and 2 concerning the ‘stewardship’ of the steward of a rich man. The Greek ‘stewardship’ is ‘oiko . . . nomia’. The Greek translated ‘steward’ is ‘oiko . . . nomos’. In Greek ‘oiko’ is ‘house’ . . ‘nomos’ is ‘law’. In Galatians 4:2 ‘oikonomos’ is translated ‘governor’. The ‘steward’ of Luke 16:1 to and 2 was manager of the affairs of the rich man. That steward had been negligent and wasteful. He was ordered to give an account of his ‘stewardship’.
MINISTERS OF CHRIST ARE STEWARDS OF THE MYSTERIES OF GOD.
In I Corinthians 4:1 to 4 we learn that ministers of Christ are expected to be faithful ‘stewards’ of the mysteries of God. In Romans 14:12 we read that every one of us shall give an account of himself to God. In II Corinthians 5:10 we learn that every Christian shall appear before the judgment-seat of Christ to give an account. In that day the Lord will say to every man who here assumes spiritual leadership over God’s people, “give an account of thy ‘stewardship’.” Thus it behooves every such leader to be a faithful steward of the mysteries of God.
The message the Lord sent to Archippus by Paul is God’s instruction to every member of the Body of Christ; “take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it (fill it full).” (Colossians 4:17). In order that every Bodymember may obey these instructions God’s Word is plain; that all Divine grace (II Corinthians 9:8), and all Divine power (Ephesians 1:19 . . Ephesians 3:20) are guaranteed. “Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:7).
PAUL’S DEPOSIT . . . TIMOTHY’S DEPOSIT OUR DEPOSIT
In II Timothy 1:12 (in the Greek) Paul testified of “my paratheke’.” ‘Paratheke’ is a ‘deposit’. In II Timothy 1:14 the same word is used, ‘paratheke’, referring to the ‘deposit’, which Timothy received from Paul, or through Paul; and which Timothy was to keep by the Holy Spirit. Timothy was instructed to commit this deposit to other men, who in turn were to commit it to others, all of whom were to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ (II Timothy 2:2 and 3), and all of whom were to suffer persecution (II Timothy 3:16), all of whom shall reign with Christ, if they have been faithful stewards. (II Timothy 2:12).
In II Timothy 2:8 and Romans 16:25 Paul referred to his ‘deposit’ as ‘my gospel’, the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the ‘mystery’.
In I Corinthians 9:17 Paul testified, “a ‘dispensation’ (‘oiko . . . nomia’) is committed unto me.” Thus we see that the Greek word translated ‘stewardship’, in Luke 16:2, is translated ‘dispensation’, in I Corinthians 9:17. It is also translated ‘dispensation’ in Ephesians 3:2 . . . Ephesians 1:10 . . . Colossians 1:25 and Ephesians 3:9. A ‘dispensation’ is not a period of time.
The meaning of ‘stewardship’ or ‘dispensation’ is ‘administration’, the administration (Ephesians 2:19) of a household. This might be a business house or a political house. With Paul the reference was to a ‘Spiritual House’. (I Timothy 3:15 and 16 . . . Ephesians 2:19 to 22). This ‘Spiritual House’ is called ‘The House of God’, ‘The Church of The Living God’, without controversy a great ‘mystery’ (I Timothy 3:15 and 16), Christ and The Church, ‘ONE FLESH’. (Ephesians 5:31 and 32).
This ‘Church of the Mystery’ is called, in Ephesians 3:6, “THE JOINT-BODY”, and in Ephesians 2:22 we learn that every believing sinner, saved by the infinite grace of God and God-given faith in the perfect redemptive work of Christ (Ephesians 1:6 and 7 and Ephesians 2:8 to 10), is a member of that Body. In Christ the Building is being fitly joined together (Ephesians 2:21), “in Whom ye also are ‘builded together’ (‘sun . . . OIKO . . . domeo’) for a habitation of God through the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22). This Church was chosen in Christ from before the overthrow of the world (Ephesians 1:4 and 5), and Christ will present it to Himself as a glorious, spotless, holy Church without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25 to 28). Thus we see that the Christian Church is not a religious organization, but an ‘ORGANISM’.
HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE DISPENSATION OF THE GRACE OF GOD?
Paul declared himself to be the prisoner of Christ for Gentiles, suffering in jail as a ‘malefactor’, an ambassador in bonds, for ‘the ‘MYSTERY’. (Ephesians 3:1 . . . Ephesians 4:1 . . . Ephesians 6:19 and 20 . . . Colossians 4:3 and 4 . . . II Timothy 2:8 and 9). He wrote to Gentiles; “if Ye have heard of the ‘dispensation’ (‘oiko . . . nomia’) of the grace of God which is given me to youward; how by revelation He (Christ) made known unto ‘me’ the ‘MYSTERY’. (Ephesians 3:2 and 3).
Paul was peculiarly a ‘grace of God’ man. That grace was given him to preach to Gentiles “the ‘unsearchable’ (past-tracing-out) riches of Christ,” and to make other Christians see what is the ‘dispensation of the mystery’, which was from the beginning of the world ‘HID IN GOD’, ‘hid from ages and from generations.” (Ephesians 3:8 and 9 . . . Colossians 1:26). This was Divine truth not prophesied by Israel’s prophets.
By God’s grace Christ appointed Paul to be ‘head-carpenter’, (‘architekton’) (I Corinthians 3:10). The expression ‘wise master-builder’ suggests that the risen Christ chose Paul to be His foreman.
Christ gave Paul His ‘grace’ message by revelation. (Galatians 1:11 and 12). In the face of any and all satanic and religious opposition Paul was determined to finish his course and preach the gospel of grace. (Acts 20:24). To Paul was committed ‘the gospel of the uncircumcision’ (Galatians 2:7), and ‘the word of reconciliation’. (II Corinthians 5:20). Paul declared himself a faithful steward. (II Timothy 4:4 to 7).
The risen Lord did not commit to Paul, for Gentiles, that which he committed to Peter and the Eleven for Israel. (Acts 2:38 and Acts 3:19 to 21). The risen Lord did not commit to Paul ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ to preach Gentiles into the Body of Christ. He did not instruct Paul to preach what Peter preached to Cornelius, in Acts 10:34 and 35 or Acts 10:4.
THE FIRST MYSTERY . . . ISRAEL BLIND FOR A SEASON AND A REASON.
In Romans 11:25 and 11:11 to 15 we learn that God blinded Israel for a season and for a reason. God would not have His stewards ignorant of this. (Romans 11:25). Paul was instructed by the risen Lord to tell saved Gentiles that they were rich for two reasons; because the rich Christ became poor (II Corinthians 8:9), and because of the fall and diminishing of Israel. (Romans 11:12). Now compare I John 2:2 and Romans 11:30. Compare Romans 5:10 and Romans 11:15. We read in Romans 5:11 that “we have ‘now’ received the ‘reconciliation”’ (not atonement). The Gentile believers were ‘reconciled’ to God, because of the death of Christ (Romans 5:10), and because of the casting away of Israel. (Romans 11:15).
The two great chapters containing foundation truth for the understanding of God’s eternal purpose concerning the Church of the Mystery, as revealed in Ephesians and Colossians, are the third chapter of Galatians and the eleventh chapter of Romans. No minister of Christ is a faithful ‘steward’ of the mysteries of God who does not earnestly endeavour to make all members of the Body of Christ see what is “the dispensation or stewardship or administration of the MYSTERY”, that is, God’s eternal purpose concerning ‘the Church of the Mystery’. No minister of Christ can qualify as a faithful steward, if he is ignorant of the mystery of Romans 11:25, learning from the Holy Spirit when and why God blinded Israel for a season and a reason. Neither will he obey Ephesians 3:9 until and unless he obeys Ephesians 4:1 to 7; until and unless he knows that the FALL of Israel, which sent salvation to the Gentiles (Romans 11:11), was not until after Israel had rejected Christ in resurrection as they had rejected Him in incarnation .
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